THE NOT-SO-PETTY CRIMINALS OF ANCIENT ATHENS

The market place in Athens

It seems that petty crime was no rare thing in Ancient Athens. There was even a section of the market area called ‘Thieves’ Market.

It may have been what we would call a flea market, where second-hand clothing and other goods are sold but one that also forms a channel for getting money for stolen goods. I bought a bicycle in one such in Dublin some years back, no questions asked. 

Of course, no bikes in ancient times, so what forms of theft were there?

You could be mugged, of course. If you weren’t carrying money or things you’d just bought in the market, they’d take your clothes and leave you to go home naked. 

They might even make you spit out any small change you had tucked away in your cheek (yes, that was normal in a time before the invention of pockets). 

On the longer routes to other towns and villages in Attica, these would be highway robbers or bandits.

If you went to the baths or the gym, as the wealthier men did frequently, you paid someone to keep an eye on your clothes, if you had sense, or a ‘cloakstripper’ would be rummaging them for any money or valuables you might have left with them. 

And, doubtless, if you carried your money in a purse or satchel on a strap over your shoulder, that could be grabbed and made off with by any number of street urchins. No use reporting it to the police – there weren’t any. 

A Scythian archer

The Scythian guards patrolled the central areas to keep order and might nab any blatant wrongdoer they spotted but, in the narrow lanes between market stalls, they couldn’t be everywhere. 

Law rested really on victims grabbing (arresting) the thief before he got away and taking him to the authorities. Not much hope of that if the mugger was threatening you in a deserted alley with a club or a knife and there were two of him. 

Mind you, if you came upon a burglar on your own property, you could take action even to killing him and be seen as justified – that’s if it’s at night: by day, you could only kill him if he resisted. Always, villains had to be caught in the act or such crimes were difficult to prove.

But, if wealthy houses had no ground floor windows and the street door was guarded by a porter with a dog, how did burglars gain access? 

Simple. They dug a hole through the wall. Either from a lane beside or from inside an adjoining house. In the main, houses were built of sunbaked mud bricks, so not too difficult to chisel away at them when folks are all out, say, at a big religious festival or maybe all asleep. 

Weighing scales for grain

Over the relatively low rooftops and down into a courtyard may have been another way in but not such an easy way out.

However, it wasn’t only the professional criminal that indulged in illegalities. The number of laws and inspectors relating to weights and measure, false coinage, and quality of foodstuffs gives a pretty good idea that such offences were rife. 

Assortment of market weights

But there are always ways round these things, like two sets of weights, one for when the inspectors are around, the other when they’re not. 

You only have to look at the non-round shapes of coins that have been unearthed by archaeologists to realise how much clipping of the metal at the edges must have gone on even though value of a coin was determined by its weight. 

Athenian silver obol - Known as an 'owl' because of the symbol

If a customer had doubts, there was a public slave stationed in the market place specifically to test coins and weights. 

What punishments did culprits face? Well, stallholders faced a fine but, as today, probably not high enough to be a real deterrent. It’s possible there was an equivalent of the medieval stocks and also a wooden device round the ankles that hobbled a culprit in the hope that the public ridicule that went with these would be enough to put people off. 

In the case of more serious theft, it was the death penalty. In Athens, that meant being shackled to a board somewhere outside the city gates and being left to starve to death. Pretty grim.

CITY OF DIRTY TRICKS

For all its reputation for noble philosophical minds, ancient Athens has to have been tops at political dirty tricks.

Dredging up past misdemeanours of opponents and getting the word round, or even making them up in rumours difficult to deny.

Charging opponents with embezzlement or defaming the gods or of taking bribes and then hauling them into court – again, it didn’t have to be true as long as it stuck.

Speeches in the Assembly were a good method, but ran the risk of being accused yourself of misleading the people (which was a crime), but graffiti was anonymous, so were dirty jokes and satirical songs.

Movie version of the Trojan horse

Mind you, it had a long history with the Greeks. One of their great heroes, Odysseus, was noted for trickery and respected for it.

The Trojan Horse was his idea and here he is tricking the Cyclops by hiding under a sheep.

They even had a god of cunning. That was Hermes, who was also patron of thieves,oratory, poetry, sports, invention and trade, boundaries and travellers.

He was also messenger of the gods and played his own first trick when he was a baby.

Odysseus tricks Cyclops

Hermes, god of cunning

All Athenian houses had a bust of him at the front door which featured in the dirty trick that destroyed General Alcibiades when he was accused of having vandalized scores of them when drunk – almost certainly organised by rival politicians.

Themistokles

Top political trickster has to be Themistokles, who features in my novel "Death Comes by Amphora".

His most successful trick was getting a false message to the invading Persian Great King Xerxes that fooled him into sending his fleet into the worst possible place for a naval battle where the Greek navy, led by Themistokles, slaughtered them.

Then, years later, when the Athenians chucked him out, Themistokles somehow persuaded the next Great King to give him a princedom, though we don’t know what false promises he may have made to get it.

Whatever they were (like offering to lead a new Persian invasion), it seems the only way he could get out of keeping them was to commit suicide.

That's the story anyway.

In my novel, there are more cunning stunts that smack of Themistokles’ way of operating.

It looks as though Perikles learnt a lot from his example.

My novel "Death Comes by Amphora" is available on Amazon Kindle.

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WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Medea kills her sons

You’d think they hated women. Well, they didn’t trust them anyway. Or more like those wealthy Athenian men who ran things didn’t trust themselves. They didn’t trust themselves not to fall in love, or lust, or infatuation.

The evidence? Look at all those plays with their powerful female characters organising a sex strike like Lysistrata, killing their husband like Clytemnestra, taking revenge on their husband by killing their children like Medea (above), or just disobeying orders and screwing things up like Antigone. All powerful, passionate women.

The men must have been scared of that, so they shut the women away and kept them uneducated, so that the women accepted it. Men (wealthy men anyway) didn’t marry till they were 30. Away fighting in wars before that and lots of brothels to let off steam, no chance of meeting citizen girls of their own age and falling in love.

Relationship - Not stated

When they did marry, it was to inexperienced girls of 14 – that way virginity was guaranteed - that’s gotta be my son not some other guy’s. It also meant more wives died in childbirth, unfortunately.

And then the wives were kept locked up in the house, allowed out only for funerals and a few religious festivals. The husband or slaves did the shopping.

The wife was there just for procreation and to bring up the kids. No real relationship.

Maybe not an average father

To keep that danger at bay the husband went to dinner parties with male friends where slave girls offered entertainment and more or he kept a slave girl himself to entertain friends and keep himself amused. And there were always the brothels.

Generally, husband and wife slept on different floors of the house not just different rooms. Who could blame a teenage wife who responded to the blandishments of a handsome young fella met at a funeral?

So who allowed this to happen?

What were they really afraid of? I think it was fear of losing control. Fear of acting irrationally, of excessive emotion that might lead them to do something they would regret. Rationality, thinking things through and acting on the conclusions, that is what we prize about our inheritance from ancient Greece. But it can’t have been much of a life for the women. Like Philia in my novel Death Come by Amphora which is available on Amazon kindle with this handsome new design.

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WHY ANCIENT ATHENS?

People ask me, “Why Ancient Athens?” and “Why 461BC?” 

Well, that’s easy. I studied Ancient History at secondary school and got fascinated at mention of an Athenian politician called Ephialtes. He, it seemed, had brought in the reforms that led to the direct democracy of one man one vote of all male citizens. And that made possible the Golden Age of Athens led by Pericles or, as they would have spelt it, Perikles. 

So an important guy. But this Ephialtes was then promptly assassinated ‘under cover of night’ and that’s all we were told.

What was going on here? Were the historians covering something up?, I wondered. It stuck in my head, so researching the novel was an opportunity to check it out for myself. 

The answer was simple. Very little is actually known about Ephialtes. Apart from a tombstone indicating a state funeral, no mention of him before Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens , written some 130 years after the man died, and Plutarch’s Life of Pericles another 320 years after that and neither telling us very much. All the more reason for exploring what happened and what better place than a novel. Especially as lots more exciting stuff happened at about the same time. 

Ephialites’ reforms took power from the wealthy aristocrats and handed it to the poorer classes of shopkeepers, craftsmen and farmers – that sounds like a revolution in anybody’s language and revolutions are usually pretty fraught times. 

Add that the top general and leader of the aristocrats General Kimon was voted into exile and that majority made possible by someone preventing four thousand aristocrats getting back from war in time for the vote. The danger of civil war must have been intense. 

What would it be like to be in Athens then with your loyalties divided between both sides, aristocrats and workers, especially if you’re nosing around looking for the murderer of your rich uncle? 

So look for a hero who is in that position – enter Lysanias, heir to that murdered rich uncle but brought up as an artisan and just 18. A bit young so give him an elderly slave and advisor – that’s Sindron. 

A very segregated society, so how can these two investigate what the women are up to? If young Lysanias has to marry his uncle’s teenage widow, maybe she can look after that angle. So that’s my detective team. 

Where did ideas for the plot come from? More about that in a later blog.

THREE CLUES TO A MYSTERY

So why these three images on the new cover? I suppose the funeral procession at the bottom is obvious. It helped me a lot to envisage the scene of Klereides’ funeral in Chapter 6.

The image on the left? Well, I had registered that there must have been plenty of merchant ships carrying supplies to and from big cities like Athens of timber, grain, wine, pottery, olive oil and more and, of course, passengers like my heroes Lysanias and Sindron.

They and crews would need water on the journey and I worked out what the big vessels for holding this, supported in harnesses of rope or leather to prevent spillage, would have looked like, even before I came across this picture. The multiple handles would take the harness. Something like this became the murder weapon in my novel and the ‘amphora’ of the title.

And the blacksmiths at the top? It seemed to me that the taking of power from the aristocrats in 461BC must be seen as tantamount to a revolution. And I knew that similar times in later history had resulted in interest by artists in depicting ordinary people and work situations.

Greek Blacksmiths at work

When I came across it, this bas relief scene of blacksmiths at work seemed just such a piece and it gave me the inspiration for a dramatic incident at the funeral party also in Chapter 6. Incidentally, the muscular arms and hammers suggested the working class violence that the aristocrats may have feared at the time.

Put them together and what have you got? A new cover but also an indication of the thinking behind at least some of the novel.

RE-ACTIVATION

Time to re-activate my blog after a long break when other things got in the way. 

Why now? 

Because my novel Death Comes by Amphora is now under my own control and available from Amazon in a Kindle edition as well as in print, both with a brand new cover design. 

Amazon.com

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On top of that, next week (from 16th) will see it at a special low price, so why not check it out on Amazon. Watch out for more posts.

BOUCHERCON IN SAN FRANCISCO

Bouchercon 2010. Wow! 

Over 1400 people, a third of them authors. Staggering. How does one get to meet and chat with anyone in a crowd like that? Well, you do, I discovered. 

For authors that one knows, either from past conventions or from online chat-groups, the fallback is making contact before or after panels they are on (or they with you), if you haven’t bumped into them before then in the bar or the very excellent hospitality room with its endless supplies. 

That’s how it was with Rhys Bowen, Carola Dunn, Nancy Means Wright, Jeri Westerson, Colin Campbell, Laurie King, Adrian Magson, Ken Isaacson, Ali Karim, Kelli Stanley and my heroes Steven Saylor, Lindsay Davis and John Maddox Roberts, the first and greatest Romans of them all and all three of them on the same panel. 

All achieved, except for Sunny Frazier, who I had wanted to thank personally, like some of the others, for helpful pre-convention advice. Thanks, Sunny. 

As she suggested, I dutifully topped up every day my small piles of bookmarks and flyers on tables in common areas, which must have contributed to the very respectable book sales and to the packed and enthusiastic audience, including 20 standing round the walls, for the enjoyable and entertaining panel I was on titled “Bitter Wine” where I swapped opinions and anecdotes with Rebecca Cabntrell, Candace Robb, Caroline and Charles Todd and moderator Oline Cogdill. But that’s nothing to the massive Grand Ballroom packed solid for the Lee Child interview.

I'd like to have seen historical crime getting more attention - only three panels dedicated and those not all easy to identify, though they were all excellent - but crime is a big field to cover.

Otherwise, yes, contacts were pretty random, though wouldn’t it be helpful if authors and fans name-tags were colour-coded in some way to differentiate them, maybe agents and publishers too? 

However, opportunities were many, starting with the Newbies Breakfast on the first morning, where flyers and bookmarks immediately came into play, to the parties and publishers’ receptions whose animated conversations flowed over into nearby restaurants and bars. 

Most unexpected occasion was the meeting of the Scowrers and Molly Maguires, the local Sherlock Holmes association, held in a German restaurant which served a surprisingly respectable pint of Guinness (I am from Ireland) with very elderly members who recalled their memories of the group’s founder, the ubiquitous Anthony Boucher. I felt justified in attending as Shots magazine had compared my own heroes Lysanias and Sindron to Holmes and Watson, though I’m not sure which would be which.

I also met my personal nemesis Gary Corby, the young Australian author whose series just launched is set in exactly my own time period in Ancient Athens, with Perikles (though spelt Pericles) as a significant character. 

We agreed not to read one another’s work to avoid cross influence, as, apparently, do Davis, Saylor and Roberts, the last two of whom also landed in the same Roman period and have written books around the same historical incidents. 

Gary is a nice guy and, with a respected and active publisher, it looks as though his book "The Pericles Commission" is doing well. Does it mean interest in Ancient Athens as a fiction location is growing? Let’s hope. Now to complete my own No.2. It is going well but illness and the problems of real life have been interfering.

An amazing convention and incredibly well-organised and run by the many enthusiastic volunteers. A bonus for me was the opportunity after it ended to visit North Beach, old stamping ground of Kerouac and Ginsberg, to browse the Beat Museum and Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, and read my poems at an Open Mic in the Caffe Greco. 

The whole six days a succession of highs, not least coming out of my modest hotel every morning and setting off into a San Francisco immediately familiar from Hollywood crime movies walking from Chinatown down the hill complete with cable car towards the concrete and glass towers of the Financial District and the convention hotel. Memorable!

Apologies for lateness of report but it's been a tough time since. Bouchercon was 14-17 October.

AND SO TO BOUCHERCON

Book launches over and successfully with many thanks to friends who helped. The poetry book looking good, everyone very appreciative. Now it’s off to Bouchercon next Wednesday. The big event of the crime fiction year, this absolutely massive convention is this year in San Francisco with over 2,000 attendees, a quarter of them authors. 

Imagine all those authors vying for attention! But other authors tell me they thoroughly enjoy it and it is productive for them, with the aim not so much to sell books at it but to catch the attention of potential readers in the expectation that they will buy when they get home.

It’s a packed schedule with five streams of panels going at the same time over four days plus authors in continuous conversation, one-author statements and interviews and activities in the craft room. Add to that social events in the evenings. It threatens to be utterly exhausting on top of the jetlag and biological clock disorientation of longhaul flights but also very exciting.

The panel I am on is called Bitter Wine at 3pm on the Friday in Room Seacliff C. It is about the need for historical accuracy in historical mystery novels among other aspects. With me are Candace Robb, Rebecca Cantrell and Caroline and Charles Todd so we range from Ancient Greece through the English Middle Ages to 20th century Europe. Sounds like a great panel and great discussion. Moderator is Oline Cogdill.

What I wasn’t prepared for is to find another author siting their novel in precisely my time and place yet there he is. Australian author Gary Corby is launching “The Pericles Commission” at Bouchercon and appearing on a panel with Steven Saylor, Lindsay Davis and John Maddox Roberts all with famous series in Ancient Rome. 

Gary’s novel sets off from the assassination of Ephialtes in Ancient Athens in 461BC and features Pericles just like me. Good to know someone else is as keen on this bit of history as me. It will be interesting to see how he has handled it and what he has come up with to fill the many gaps in the historical record, one of the most difficult aspects of writing historical fiction.

I’m looking forward to meeting lots of new people and making new friends, all enthusiastic about the same things I am. Can’t wait. I’ll let you know how it goes.

HIJACKED BY POETRY

Loads of time lately devoted to organising and publicising and sending out invites for the book-launch in Drogheda of my new poetry collection from Lapwing Publications of Belfast - probably the only poetry publisher around would take on my long poems (some here up to 5 and 7 pages). 

It's called GREYBELL WOOD AND BEYOND. 

55 pages of quirky and idiosyncratic stuff offering snapshots and mini-dramas from my life experiences and observations and my first solo run at poetry. I now have copies - looks good. On the cover is the black-and-white photo taken by my dad long years ago of my mum, sister and me sitting on a fallen tree in a bluebell wood. 

It's what prompted the title poem "Greybell Wood", which started as a fairly short nostalgia piece but grew over successive revises into a study of the way memory works and the power of photographs to trigger emotions and other cogitations. Strange where the creative process takes you. 

The same could be said of other poems including "Reunion" which follows my year at college through their lives and careers over 50 years - now there's ambitious for you! 

The book-launch is on 21st September followed by one in Dublin on October 5th. Otherwise, nail-biting time waiting to hear if I'm on a panel at Bouchercon 2010, the big crime fiction convention in San Francisco I'm going to in October.

OF ANCIENT POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE LIFE

Lets look at what I’ve been reading lately and why. I tend to avoid reading books very close to my period. Well, yes, because of the risk I might find myself plagiarising unintentionally but also because, on the one occasion I broke this rule, I suddenly found I was confusing the reality from my own research with the other author’s fiction – which may have been based on sound research or invented. Best to stay clear.

But I found the politics of 5th century Athens becoming more and more important in my sequel, so I became keen to see how other authors deal with this. Then I registered that Robert Harris’ series about Cicero’s life – Imperium and Lustrum, were straight historicals rather than histmysts so little risk of pollution. So far I’ve read only Imperium and exciting it is. Raw power politics with menace and not much else but very compelling, a real page turner. 

The same author’s Pompeii I hadn’t liked at all. Uninteresting cardboard characters, unbelievable plot sequences, solid undigested lumps of Pliny the Younger (and Elder) plonked on the page, little real understanding of how such a town would work – no thanks. Now here was the real thing – Republican Rome red in tooth and claw. Fascinating. 

But could I learn anything from it? Maybe not. As a histmyst writer, any political background has to serve and be integrated with the crimes the hero has to solve, though some of these may have a political motive. But the pace and excitement? Can I achieve that? Lets see. But, for now, I’m dying to get into Lustrum.

Then, by chance, I came across a bargain price copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel I had never read before. Apart from the glowing quality of the writing and gradually tiring of Wilde’s epigrams and aphorisms in the mouth of Sir Henry Wotton, what’s fascinating here is Dorian’s double life and the way it reflected Wilde’s own and the whole novel almost forecasts Wilde’s own future life and downfall. Lets stick to the double life for now. 

My hero, Lysanias, inherits the estate of his uncle, a wealthy aristocrat in ancient Athens, and all the social expectations that implies yet he has been brought up his father in a distant colony as an artisan, a carpenter, and developed sympathies with craftsmen and workers. 

Now that’s very convenient for me as author (indeed why I invented the device) for Athens is split politically between the aristocrats and the radical people’s party and to be able to investigate his uncle’s death, Lysanias needs to be able to talk to individuals on both sides and get answers. 

So I invented it for story reasons but did it occur to me because my own life carries elements of similarity? Times when I have worked for a PR agency promoting the cause of, say, property developers while, in my spare time active in community organisations campaigning against specific projects of such people or even involved in plays attacking their whole ethos. Whether that was a cause, obviously it must have helped me to write effectively what it feels like to have that ambivalence, having to balance two different ways of thinking and understanding. 

That was fine in No.1. How does it work now when there are people on both sides who know of his connections with their opponents? That’s what I’m working out at the moment.

CLASSICS, CRIME AND LOADS OF CHAT

I attended the excellent Summer School of the Classical Association of Ireland at Trinity College this weekend. Two really fascinating talks by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill about how the ruins of Herculaneum (the other Roman town buried by Vesuvius at the same time as Pompeii) were discovered and at least partially unearthed over succeeding centuries and about how the parts so far exposed are being restored and preserved. 

The problems here are that the volcanic material that overtook the town and flowed into all spaces solidified into rock which is difficult to drill out plus that a modern town was built on top, which doesn’t make the archaeologists’ work easy. 

Some beautiful and revealing photographs and interesting old newsreel material of archaeological teams at work in the first half of the 20th. century. Useful titbits garnered as well from other talks about ancient Greek houses and temples. Individuals among this gathering of very friendly people – teachers, academics and enthusiasts - showed interest in my novel and there was much congenial conversation.

Launch of my new collection of poems Bluebell Wood and Beyond comes next in late September and early October in Drogheda and Dublin and then, in mid-November, the big adventure of attending Bouchercon in San Francisco, perhaps the most heavily attended of all the crime fiction conventions. 

It sounds very exciting. 

With luck I get to meet my heroes – Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis whose series of novels in their different styles about Ancient Roman detectives Gordianus and Falco defined the genre and laid down the high standard to be aimed for.

GARDEN AND GUESTS

A strange year in the garden. First nothing started growing till very late because the ice and snow and then continuing cold temperatures in the early months – not your normal Irish weather by any means. Then it all spurted up and was delayed again by very erratic rainfall. 

The apple trees masses of fruit but not enough rain to make them swell. The runner beans starting off well but running out of energy and hardly making it halfway up their canes. The radishes going to seed before they had swelled enough to be eatable.

But there have been enough sunny days for us to sit out under the trees and have meals there, sometimes with guests, something that hardly happened at all last year, so no complaints. 

Just pleased to have our long thin garden, bounded by trellis and mature shrubs, up a flight of steps from the back door so exposed to the sun at all times of the day, as a relaxing and visually enchanting resource.

THE NOT SO PETTY CRIMINALS OF ANCIENT ATHENS

It seems that petty crime was no rare thing in Ancient Athens. There was even a section of the market area called ‘Thieves’ Market’. It may have been what we would call a flea market, where second-hand clothing and other goods are sold but one that also forms a channel for getting money for stolen goods. I bought a bicycle in one such in Dublin some years back, no questions asked. Of course, no bikes in ancient times, so what forms of theft were there?

You could be mugged, of course. If you weren’t carrying money or things you’d just bought in the market, they’d take your clothes and leave you to go home naked. They might even make you spit out any small change you had tucked away in your cheek (yes, that was normal in a time before the invention of pockets). On the longer routes to other towns and villages in Attica, these would be highway robbers.

If you went to the baths or the gym, as the wealthier men did frequently, you paid someone to keep an eye on your clothes, if you had sense, or a ‘cloakstripper’ would be rummaging them for any money or valuables you might have left with them. And, doubtless, if you carried your money in a purse or satchel on a strap over your shoulder, that could be grabbed and made off with by any number of street urchins.

No use reporting it to the police – there weren’t any. The Scythian guards patrolled the central areas to keep order and might nab any blatant wrongdoer they spotted but, in the narrow lanes between market stalls, they couldn’t be everywhere. Law rested really on victims grabbing (arresting) the thief before he got away and taking him to the authorities. 

Not much hope of that if the mugger was threatening you in a deserted alley with a club or a knife and there were two of him. Mind you, if you came upon a burglar on your own property, you could take action even to killing him and be seen as justified – that’s if it’s at night: by day, you could only kill him if he resisted. Always, villains had to be caught in the act or such crimes were difficult to prove.

But, if wealthy houses had no ground floor windows and the street door was guarded by a porter with a dog, how did burglars gain access? Simple. They dug a hole through the wall. Either from a lane beside or from inside an adjoining house. 

In the main, houses were built of sun-baked mud bricks, so not too difficult to chisel away at them when folks are all out, say, at a big religious festival or maybe all asleep. Over the relatively low rooftops and down into a courtyard may have been another way in but not such as easy way out.

However, it wasn’t only the professional criminal that indulged in illegalities. The number of laws and inspectors relating to weights and measure, false coinage, and quality of foodstuffs gives a pretty good idea that such offences were rife. But there are always ways round these things, like two sets of weights, one for when the inspectors are around, the other when they’re not. 

You only have to look at the non-round shapes of coins that have been unearthed by archaeologists to realise how much clipping of the metal at the edges must have gone on even though value of a coin was determined by its weight. If a customer had doubts, there was a public slave stationed in the market place specifically to test coins and weights.

What punishments did culprits face? Well, stallholders faced a fine but, as today, probably not high enough to be a real deterrent. It’s possible there was an equivalent of the medieval stocks and also a wooden device round the ankles that hobbled a culprit in the hope that the public ridicule that went with these would be enough to put people off. 

In the case of more serious theft, it was the death penalty. In Athens, that meant being shackled to a board somewhere outside the city gates and being left to starve to death. Pretty grim.

WE WUZ ROBBED

Everybody's fuming in Drogheda and in County Louth generally. The smallest county in Ireland and 50 years since it won the Leinster region final of the gaelic football championship and this year it reached that final and was winning until the final minutes of injury time. Then, in a melee in front of the Louth goal, the ball trickled across the line. However, no-one had 'played' it to that end which, under the rules, makes it invalid. But the referee awarded a goal to Meath, the other side, and hence victory in the match. He later admitted he had made the wrong decision and it was an invalid goal but too late. Fans invaded the pitch and punched him to great outcry. The governing body said there was nothing they could do. The Meath management committee debated requesting a replay but decided against. The decision stands. Hence the inevitable feeling of "We wuz robbed!"

On a quite different tack. I recently read Robert Harris' "Imperium". I had previously disliked his "Pompeii" immensely with its boring cardboard characters, unexciting style and regurgitated chunks of Pliny the Younger sometimes as straight quotes not to mention major implausibilities. 

This account of the early career of Cicero was completely different. Naked power politics with menace, so exciting I could hardly put it down to go to bed. The battle for power between dynamic and ambitious individuals and factions with real historical characters who came to life as totally real. 

Whether all the incidents actually happened is another matter - if they did Cicero must have been an incredibly brave man to have said some of those things in the those places - but it reads as completely plausible. I can hardly wait to read the next instalment "Lustrum".

I have been very erratic in maintaining this blog so far, so lets hope I can make a fresh start now.

JUNE UPDATE

The bad news? Dublin lost its one dedicated crime fiction bookshop with the demise of Murder Ink on Dawson Street. Enthusiast Michael forced to close down last month due to ill-health and decline of business in the recession. 

A great loss to readers and writers (he was very supportive of Irish crime writers and had racks solely for Historical Crime books including American titles not available elsewhere in Dublin). Following the loss of Murder One in London last year, this leaves only Alibis in Belfast struggling on.

The other bad news is that the Irish gangster/film Noir movie “Trafficked” which my son Simon and I released in Ireland last month came out on the hottest and sunniest weekend in May that anyone remembers when only an eejit (as we call them here) would dream of going to the cinema – and it turned out there weren’t many eejits around. 

So a very short cinema life for the film. A great shame as it’s a very powerful little film, brilliantly acted by Ruth Negga, Karl Shiels and the rest of the cast, a strong story exploring an important issue. Lets hope it develops a big following on DVD.

This also slowed down my blog booktour but there is a recent addition which appeared 31st. May. It’s about Ancient Greek Cookery and titled Titillating Ancient Tastebuds (with just a flavour of poison). 

You can find it at http://damesofdialogue.wordpress.com/2010/05/

Thanks for having me Maggie. More are promised, some written, but no dates fixed yet. I’ll let you know.

WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS

Growing withdrawal symptoms at missing Crimefest in Bristol this year and so will not meet again the author friends I have made there in previous years. Apologies guys!

The reason, of course, is the release in selected cinemas in Ireland of Irish film Noir gangster movie "Trafficked" on Friday with Gala Premiere on Wednesday. Hectic time. Lots of media attention at the Press Screening and interview days, so looks as though it could do OK despite the general reluctance of Irish audiences to go to Irish movies. Fingers crossed.

Garden looking good. Bluebells, Aquilegia and Apple Blossom out and managing to get some vegetables sown - late, but then nature herself is running late this year due to the ultra-cold and over-long winter. No sign yet of may blossom in the hedgerows that are normally a mass of white by now.

Once the movie release is out of the way hopefully posts on this blog will get more regular. Lysanias considering whether he wants to adopt the fancy new gents hairstyle or not.

POETRY SLAMS AND MOVIES

The Great Drogheda Poetry Slam which I hosted on Friday went great - by delaying start time in traditional Irish fashion number grew to 45 with 20 competitors in two categories. An enjoyable evening was had by all with an amazing variety of poems. 

Part of the Drogheda Fringe which, together with the official Arts Festival, has brought quite a buzz to the town this bank holiday weekend. I also had a few of my photomontages exhibited in Urb Exchange an interaction experiment in an empty shop space which has been arousing interest.

Next up is release of Irish gangster movie Trafficked with Ruth Negga and Karl Shiels directed by Ciaran O'Connor. It hits screens in Dublin, Cork and Galway on May 21st - not long to go - look out for it. It's a stunning little movie. 

More at www.traffickedthemovie.com 

It's distributed by Simon and my company Stoney Road Films.

Otherwise haven't managed to get the garden sorted, though it is finally looking really green with leaves out and blossom emerging on the apple trees. And these things seem to have blotted out significant writing which is not a good thing.