“On the edge of foreign”: race and (non-)belonging in contemporary Irish crime fiction

ABSTRACT

Using Andrew Nugent’s Second Burial (2007) to exemplify the Celtic Tiger era crime fiction, this article compares Second Burial to two recent Celtic Phoenix era crime novels: Tana French’s The Trespasser (2016) and Brian O’Connor’s Bloodline (2017). In doing so, I show how Irish crime authors forge a complicated path from the isolated token immigrant figure to a more nuanced portrayal of belonging and non-belonging. I argue that, in case of recent Irish crime fiction, spaces of belonging are established and defined through visible but also through audible markers of difference. My essay demonstrates the stubborn persistence of a residual desire for delineating the aural and visual boundaries that separate the national “I” from strangers, citizens from non-belonging aliens.

KEYWORDS:

• Irish crime fiction
• Tana French
• immigration
• race
• Celtic Tiger
• Celtic Phoenix

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Qtd. in Johnsen, “Crime,” 122.

2. Burke, “Editor’s Note,” 9.

3. Recent scholarship is increasingly more focused on highlighting the ways in which crime fiction engages with 21^st -century Ireland. Consider, for example, Clark, “Mean Streets, New Lives” and Cliff, Irish Crime Fiction. Most recently, Caitlín Nic ĺomhair’s essay offer a fascinating insight into Irish-language crime fiction (2020).

4. Charlotte McIvor and Matthew Spangler argue that, compared to the term “immigration,” “inward migration … [is] more inclusive of a wider range of people” (4).

5. Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism, 2.

6. White, Modernity, 69–70.

7. Lentin, “Diaspora,” 8.

8. Garner “Making,” 78.

9. Fanning, Immigration, 16.

10. Garner, “Babies,” 4–5.

11. See note 7 above

12. Fanning, Immigration, 17.

13. Krings, Moriarty, Wickham, Bobek, and Salamońska, “From Boom,” 38–42.

14. qtd. in Veličković, “Eastern,” 649.

15. McGinnity and Gijsberts, “A Threat,” 294.

16. Kovačević, Narrating, 3.

17. Veličković, “Eastern,” 651.

18. Contemporary Irish drama, poetry and fiction has been energised by an increasing body of writing by immigrant authors, including fiction writers such as Ifedinma Dimbo, Melatu Uche Okorie, and Ebun Akpoveta, dramatists like Bisi Aidgun, Ursula Rani Sarma, Mirjana Rendulic, and poets such as Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Evgeny Sthorn.

19. Fogarty, “Many and Terrible,” 121.

20. Ahmed, Strange, 6.

21. Ibid., 3.

22. Ibid., 6.

23. Veličković, “Balkanisms,” 196.

24. Nugent, Second, 2.

25. Cliff, Irish Crime, 149.

26. Nugent, Second, 12.

27. Ibid., 11.

28. Ibid., 9.

29. Ibid., 9.

30. Ibid., 14.

31. Ibid., 55.

32. Ibid., 50.

33. Ibid., 82.

34. Ibid., 192.

35. Ahmed, Strange, 69; and Nugent, Second, 81.

36. Nugent, Second, 6.

37. Ibid., 3; 6; 6; 68.

38. Mutwarasibo, “African Communities,” 350.

39. Nugent, Second, 54.

40. Ibid., 103.

41. Ibid., 225.

42. Ibid., 222.

43. Ahmed, “Home,” 331.

44. Titley, “All Aboard,” 204.

45. Clark, “Mean Streets,” 261.

46. O’Connor, Bloodline, 163.

47. Ibid., 10.

48. Ibid., 10.

49. Veličković, “Balkanisms,” 196.

50. O’Connor, Bloodline, 163.

51. Ibid., 38.

52. Ibid., 38.

53. Ibid., 126.

54. Ibid., 127.

55. Ibid., 124–5.

56. Kovačević, Narrating, 2.

57. O’Connor, Bloodline, 199.

58. Ibid., 199.

59. Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 96.

60. French, The Secret, 17.

61. Ibid., 16.

62. Ibid., 37. Remarkably, the reviewers did not pick up on Conway’s mixed-race background either. See, for example, Laura Wilson in the Guardian or Thomas Gaughan’s review in The Booklist.

63. Potter, “A Killed B”

64. French, The Trespasser, 36.

65. Mulhall, “Arrivals,” 185.

66. French, The Trespasser, 1, 2.

67. Ibid., 2.

68. Ahmed, Strange, 20.

69. French, The Trespasser, 296.

70. Ibid., 312.

71. Ahmed, Strange, 4.

72. French, The Trespasser, 316.

73. Ibid., 298.

74. Ibid., 314.

75. Ahmed, Strange, 20.

76. French, The Trespasser, 451.

77. Ibid., 452.

78. Schmid, “Imagining Safe,” 266.

79. Ibid., 265.

80. qtd. in Pierse, “People,” 34.

81. Ibid., 34.