Thriller: So much crime fiction is being published these days that it's becoming virtually impossible to establish an identity with a début outing. A good way to begin is to take an interesting central character and plonk him (or, much less frequently, her) into an interesting place.
Think Rebus in Ian Rankin's Edinburgh; Robicheaux in James Lee Burke's Louisiana; Medway in Robert Wilson's west Africa. That Cormac Millar has set his début novel, An Irish Solution, in a putative government-funded anti-drug agency in Dublin is, therefore, a promising start. Trendy, affluent Dublin; virgin territory for crime writers, well endowed with criminals of all shapes and sizes.
Long before the end of the proceedings, however, it becomes clear that, a few scattered references to Georgian squares and "the darkened farmland of north county Dublin" notwithstanding, the city - fair or otherwise - isn't actually going to make its presence felt at all in this book. Compared to the strongly familiar, yet strangely sinister Dublin to be found, say, in the thrillers of Julie Parsons, Millar's Dublin is a bland kind of confection.
It could be any city, anywhere. Which may be part of the point; but it doesn't make for memorable reading.
Then there are the words "A Séamus Joyce novel" striped confidently across the front cover. A new kid on the crime block. A cool name. A good sign. There is, though, a problem with the bould Séamus. Millar has elected to make of his anti-hero not a Garda detective or a private investigator, but a civil servant. In theory, Joyce is a eurocrat of the sophisticated kind, a man who chooses Le Figaro for his airport reading and is au fait with the latest developments on the Scandinavian jazz front. In practice, he's a mildly depressed man with a sick wife. Every word that comes out of Séamus's mouth, every thought that passes through his head, touches on the dying Theresa and their dead marriage. Arguably this makes him a decent bloke; certainly it leaves room for a plethora of minor characters, many of whom - such as the diminutive, perceptive and mightily irreverent nun Mother Polycarp - effortlessly upstage him; it doesn't, alas, make him interesting. It's hard, frankly, to imagine readers clamouring for more of Séamus Joyce the way they clamour for more of Rebus, Robicheaux and Medway.
Maybe it's just going to take more than one outing to establish this particular crimefighter. Millar has a pleasingly black sense of humour and a keen eye for ambiguity. He's good at broad brushstrokes, too: corruption in high places; studious schoolgirls working in dodgy nightclubs; the idea that Ireland's view of itself as a mover and shaker in Europe is fatally flawed.
But seriously good crime writing is in the details. No 21st-century cop, even if he is American, should admit to shooting a villain with the words: "Regrettable, but I had to take him out . . ." And here's hoping this is the last time the sentence "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" ever, ever, ever makes it on to a self-respecting page.
• Arminta Wallace is an Irish Times journalist
