Niamh O'connor. Festival Isla De Literatura / Isla Literary Festival. Instituto Cervantes Dublín

We welcome this afternoon Niamh O'Connor who is a crime writer and is also a journalist. Irish journalist who is participating in the ISLA Festival (Irish, Spanish and Latin American Literary Festival). Very welcome, Niamh. Could you tell me if you have any connection with the Spanish speaking world? I have no connection except that I'm just back from Spain. I was on holiday in Spain, just got back. Oh, great. Could you tell us about your work, about what you write? Sure, I'm the true crime editor for the Sunday World Newspaper that is newspaper of... The main crime newspaper really in the country. We do a lot of exposés and and my job is really to concentrate on true crime cases that have captured the public imagination. So, for instance in the Celtic Tiger years we saw a lot of wives, for instance, killing their husbands for no other reason than ambition. These were unprecedented. For the first time these murders weren't happening because of drink or drugs or deprivation. They were happening because it was easier to get rid of someone than to divorce them in terms of... That's how ambitious people became. So we have an incredible story for instance of a woman in Clare. Sharon Collins was her name and she was a woman in her forties. She googled the word "hitman" because she decided she wanted to bump off her partner so she could inherit his millions. She decided she was also going to bump off his two sons. So she could secure the inheritance for her own sons. And these are the kind of stories, if you like of the time. Ok, so you are writing those kind of stories in the newspaper, in this true crime newspaper. Yes. But besides that you write books. I do, I write novels too. From spending a lot of time in court I felt very constrained by having to stick to the absolute facts of the case in that. When people are going to court they have to leave the language of emotion. You know, at the door because it's a very clinical process. And yet it's such an emotional journey for families. And there's always like a *** or *** or savagery involved. And I needed an outlet for that so I started to write novels. And do you spend much time in the court because of your job as a reporter? Exactly. There's something here, because in the Spanish speaking world we don't have this literary division for true crime. It's not fiction at all. It's just a report. For instance, a book like this. Is it a journalist work? Because it's not a novel, it's not fiction. Well, this is more like a sort of biography life story about Jim Donovan who founded the first forensics lab in this country. And this was an extraordinary true crime story, if you like. Jim was a crime fighter and yet he was also a victim of crime because of the incredible evidence he could give in court that would push gangsters basically in prison. He was targeted in a trial for assassination and they blew off part of his feet in a car bomb and nearly killed him. And as a result of, if you like, he was as I said just this incredible, incredibly important to the crime fighting world and yet he was a victim. So his story was a true story and I thought it was fascinating that there was never any justice for Jim in terms of putting the man responsible behind bars. Well, I did a little research about true crime literature here in Ireland. I visited a couple of book shops. And I found out that it's very popular. And also in the section of true crime I saw the novel "In cold blood" by Truman Capote. So there is something that it's not completely thorough, it has been fictionalised. Yes, it's interesting, yes. I suppose it's when a story captures the imagination or a character captures the imagination to such an extent that what people believe about the character might not always be as real as the story is but it becomes almost fictional. I'll give you an example. One of the biggests gangsters in this country was a man called Martin Cahill, known as "The general". He became known as somebody who was like a Robin Hood character. There was a level of acceptance for what he did in terms of he was considered someone who had been born in very impoverished circumstances and who always liked to outwit the guards. And you would see it in a film about his life and if you like he took on a persona in the public imagination that nearly became bigger than the actuality of who he was. For instance, Jim Donovan would have been his victim, had he would...The General would be behind the car bomb on Jim. So for instance, RTE, the state broadcaster as part of the cultural Ireland series filmed The General. Now Jim Donovan was the victim, the living proof that The General was not a cultural character. So it's a very strange kind of murky line Yes, it is definitely when the language of a story becomes almost fictional but the story is true. And also you write another kind of books which are thriller, crime books. Yes. And those books, I suppose you take something from your job, from your stories. Does it help your work as a journalist? Yes, for instance, in those novels there are about a female detective inspector. She's based on a real person who I would have seen in court being grilled by a a defense barrister. And it was the way her body language conveyed her absolute contempt for the questions being asked. She never turned to look this barrister in the eye when she answered these questions. She would only answered to the judge. It is so hard to get a case to court in the first place. There almost needs to be irrefutable proof in the case to get it to court and yet it falls to twelve citizens to decide whether or not it is true. But for the guards who investigate it, they are convinced they have their man once they get them to court, all of them. And in the process of your job as a investigator, as a crime reporter, do you have any anecdote, any big trouble you have been involved? Plenty. I had to go undercover once during again the boom years, a couple of years ago. We found a very respectable so supposedly character who was running a mortgage broker. He was acting as a mortgage broker. And this man had been the Head of the Wicklow County GAA. And he was as I said well respected. But what he was doing was he was providing his clients with fake bank documents to provide to banks, showing that they had money in their accounts, a saving history and credit rating to get the money to buy houses. Whatever level of sympathy there might be for people who wanted to get onto the property ladder. He would be regarded as another rogue who was kind of helping people even though what he was he was doing was criminal. When you consider where this country is now it turns out that... And how many people have lost their homes, he was most definitely a very dangerous man. Just to finish, what term book does describe you better? Writer or journalist? Writer, yes. In order to work in a tabloid like the one you work.Are you more writer than journalist? No, I would say you have to be more journalist. Because actually it doesn't matter, the writing doesn't matter because it's quite formulated in journalism as you know. The story is everything... but of course for commercially successful authors the story is everything too. Thank you very much for coming. And we hope you enjoy our festival. Absolutely. Thank you.