When Irish Eyes Are Crimin'

 

My Irish-born Great Grandmother, Mary Scanlon

It was a summer day in the mid-seventies.  I was home from college and  on the phone with my friend Tim.  I asked if he had plans for the evening.

"I was thinking of going to a bar," he said, "but I've been there so often I feel like  a groupie."

And so I learned that some of the local Irish bars -- of which New Jersey had many -- featured live folk music most nights.  There was one group my friends and I were especially fond of: two men who both played guitar and sang.  One was American*, the other was raised in Ireland.  Occasionally they played with a third man on electric bass.

We saw them a lot in the next few years. Once we went into New York City to hear them at the Bells of Hell.  There an older gentleman cheerfully heckled them but they didn't mind, largely because it was Frank Herbert, the author of Dune.

Later we discovered another favorite band.  Oddly enough it was also two men, one American and one Irish.

For a fan of crime fiction Irish folk music had plenty of material.  There were the rebel songs ("Men Behind the Wire," "Come Out Ye Black and Tans," "Broad Black Brimmer,")   which another friend of mine cheerfully described as "terrorist music." (And boy, did one of those singers get mad about that.) And plenty of outlaw songs ("Whisky in the Jar," "Wild Colonial Boy,")  But don't forget songs of domestic violence and disharmony ("William Bloat," "Weela Weela Wallya,") Then there was "Danny Boy" which involves no crimes, but which one of the singers hated so much that frequent requests for it almost led him to violence.

But something came along (wearing diapers) that made evenings in the bar more difficult for us, and while that delightful obstacle has grown up and moved away,  here in the Pacific Northwet live music is not so common in Molly's O'Shamrock Erin Pub.

However, recently I got thinking about those good old days and wondering if I could write a crime story about them.  Turns out I could!  "Courtin' in the Kitchen," in the March/April issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine features a Jersey boy who brings his California wife back home for a wedding and runs into one of those musicians he used to know.  My story features an American and an Irish singer, but oddly enough, they were inspired by one member each of my two favorite bands.

And speaking of things long past, 2026 marks fifty years since I first submitted a story to EQMM.  Time to celebrate with an Irish coffee, methinks.

* I recently found out he was born in Ireland but to my ear he sounded American.