Down These Green Streets by Declan Burke

Author:Declan Burke [Declan Burke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909718043
Publisher: Liberties Press
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

‘You should write a piece on the subject of exiles,’ the editor of this anthology suggested.

I sat intrigued for a few moments.

‘Well, you know,’ I began, ‘that’s probably not a bad idea because the main character in both my detective series are exiles.’

‘Yes, squire, that’s why I thought you might be interested in covering it,’ he replied in an editorial kinda way.

As I walked along Dublin’s crowded streets on my way to a reading I was doing that evening with Gentleman Sam Millar, my head was filled with the editor’s words and ideas were sprouting as fast as new detective TV shows.

Not until this invitation had I considered how many characters in my two detective series, Camden Town’s Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy and Donegal’s Inspector Starrett, were members of the displaced; either forced or self-imposed exiles. So this is a golden opportunity for me to examine how being an exile helps shape some of my characters and in a way, as it’s a path I’ve trodden myself, allows me to examine how being an exile might have shaped my own life.

Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy was originally from Portrush and is now living and working in Camden Town. Also in Kennedy’s team are: DS James Irvine who, with his non-intentional, near-perfect take on Sean Connery’s accent, reveals his origins clearly, and Desk Sergeant Timothy Flynn, is a long time Camden Towner, but is originally from Ballymena in Northern Ireland. The protagonist in the most recent Kennedy mystery, The Beautiful Sound of Silence, is twice exiled; once in his teens to London, in his twenties to Berkeley in California, and eventually, a few years before our story begins, he returns to London rather than his place of birth. The rest of the regulars: ann rea; DS Anne Coles; DS Dot King and Dr Leonard Taylor, are all English, although Dr Taylor is consciously based on, and named after, my hometown boyhood family doctor. From the Donegal series, Inspector Starrett is an exiled exile; he’s originally from Ramelton. He had to hightail it to London in his late teens where he remained for several years before returning to Ramelton to take up a new career as a detective in the Gardaí. Dr Samantha Aljoe, Starrett’s temptress, and pathologist, is originally from the Home Counties, but now finds herself based in Donegal, working out of Letterkenny General Hospital.

Originally, I myself am from a wee village in the wilds of County Derry called Magherafelt. I moved to London in 1967 when I was seventeen years old. I was on the Beatles’ trail. Sadly I was to learn that they’d split up only months previously. London, in those (pre-Ryanair) days was twenty long, gruelling hours away. London in those days still had signs in guesthouse windows declaring, ‘No Blacks, Dogs or Paddies’.

For all that, I realise, and accept with hindsight, that I enjoyed a comparatively easy exile.

In the generations before mine, families used to grieve children emigrating, the way they grieve the dead. Even as late as the ’50s and ’60s it was the same.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.