CATECHIZING WITH KT McCAFFREY: INTERVIEW PART ONE

Once in a while you read a book that is number 5 or 6 in a series and regret having missed the earlier books, and that’s how I felt when I read The Cat Trap by K.T.McCaffrey. The book features a glamorous Dublin based investigative journalist named Emma Boylan, and author Kevin McCaffrey took some time away from Emma to answer some questions.

1] Kevin do you find it difficult or strange to have a woman as your protagonist?

Yes I do find it a little odd to have a woman as my main protagonist but I did not have the bottle to go up against the staple diet of the established fathers of crime fiction, you know the hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, wise-cracking, womanising, anti-establishment, anti-authority, hot-headed, reckless, eccentric, non-conformist characters that populate our favourite mystery stories.
Having a female reporter gave me a relatively blank canvas to work on.

2] Do you base your characters on people you have met in Dublin, or are they from your imagination?

A little bit of everything. Sometimes I use people I know as a starting point; other times I morph the characteristics of two or maybe three acquaintances.
Then again, other characters come straight out of the ether, and there are usually the best ones because I don’t feel restricted by any preconceived notions about them.

3] You mentioned Ken Bruen’s The Guards in the book, what other Irish crime writers do you read?

I first came across the name Ken Bruen attached to a glowing review of my third book, “The Body Rock”, in the Evening Herald. Well, I wanted to know who this guy was that lavished praise on my writing, so I decided to check him out, brought a copy of “The Guards” and was blown away. I’ve worshipped at the altar of Bruen ever since.
Other Irish crime writers who float my boat include Vincent Banville, Declan Burke and Gene Kerrigan.

4] Do you read a lot of crime fiction and if so has any particular crime fiction author inspired you? Who are your favourites?

Yeah, I read an awful lot of crime fiction, maybe too much. My favourite international authors are Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Ian Rankin, Elizabeth George, Iain Banks and about 700 others.

TO BE CONTINUED