Conor Brady on his new crime novel
He edited the Irish Times for 16 years and he was one of the inaugural garda ombudsmen. Now he’s turned to writing crime fiction. Conor Brady talks to Stephen Dineen about ‘A June of ordinary murders’ and life before and after the book.
As someone who studied history at university, Conor Brady has gone full circle. In the UCD of the 1960s he studied the Land League, Parnell and the British empire. Brady subsequently wrote a masters thesis on the history of Free State policing. The setting of ‘A June of ordinary murders’ takes him back to it all.
“I very consciously set it in that period because I think it’s a fascinating period in Irish history for a start,” Brady tells eolas, “but also I wanted to get away from current events and current affairs.” He adds: “But at the same time I wanted to engage with issues that are universal and timeless, like conflicted loyalties and frustrated ambitions and personal self-doubt.”
The story takes place in 1887 Dublin, during the greatest heatwave the city has endured. Prince Victor Albert is due in Dublin to celebrate the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria. Political unrest is in the air, and the police are apprehensive about a possible assassination attempt. When the bodies of a man and young boy are found in the Phoenix Park, Detective Joe Swallow, a tired and cynical member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, is called in to investigate. He works amidst the social, criminal and political worlds of Victorian Dublin.
As a lover of history Brady sees parallels between then and now. “At the time this book is set, 1880s, Ireland was in relative terms a very prosperous country and it was an integral part of the most prosperous country in Europe, the United Kingdom,” he says.
Then, “a series of influences began to make themselves felt,” he believes, “which gave impulse to a new demand for national self-expression and translated into the independence movement, which led to the conflict of 1916-21.”
“We’ve done very well out of the European Union,” he analogises, “and yet people are turning against it.” Yet again, “we find ourselves asking ourselves questions about the wisdom of being involved with this huge powerful empire.”
“There was crime in Victorian Dublin. There was violence. But murder was rare,” he makes the contrast. Police in the 1880s “were just one step above poverty.”
However, policing culture hasn’t changed, believes Brady, who wrote a book on the history of An Garda Síochána in 1974. “The group culture is very strong. You stick by your people. Your people stick by you. The mythology of the thin blue line is very strong.”
Ombudsman
Policing culture is something with which Brady was very familiar before he turned to fiction. He was one of three ombudsmen appointed to the newly established Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) in 2006.
“We were the last jurisdiction in these islands to do it,” he says of the decision to establish independent policing oversight. It arose from the Good Friday Agreement and, following “the unfortunate business of policing breakdown in Donegal” and the subsequent Morris Tribunal “the perception was well-grounded, that the police should not be left to supervise themselves totally.”
The new institution was “quite difficult for them culturally,” says Brady of An Garda Síochána’s initial reaction. “But it settled down very quickly I must say. I think it’s great credit to them that they did adapt to it very quickly.”
Problems remain, however. The GSOC has difficulties accessing criminal intelligence for investigations. “You get complaints from people who say: ‘I am a police informant and I’ve been badly treated for some reason or another and I’ve got a complaint,’” states Brady. With the police reluctant to impart information, but the GSOC needing it for investigations, he believes “protocols need to be fleshed out and the working practices need to be refined a bit better.”
Overall, regular GSOC surveying of public (and police) opinion shows “very high awareness” of its existence, says Brady. He adds: “The public, I think, generally regard the commission as being independent, fair, but I think they sometimes feel that we’re not as effective as we can be.”
While many gardaí “feel that the disciplinary regime anyway is too strict,” Brady began to get unofficial feedback from gardaí that they had been treated more fairly than might have happened under internal investigation.
Before his time as an ombudsman, the son of a garda superintendent was a journalist for over 30 years, culminating in 16 years as editor of the Irish Times, until 2002. Under his stewardship, circulation rose from 82,000 to a peak of 122,000.
“I felt very privileged to do it,” he recalls. “I enjoyed it hugely. It’s great to have a ringside seat at history, when important things were happening,” citing the peace process, further EU development, the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of China.
The media’s “business model” of that time has gone, he states. There have been benefits from the internet revolution, such as “the extraordinary convenience of new media” and “citizenship journalism”. He adds: “But you do need a core of people, in my view, with some training, and some developed judgement, who can sort out the wheat from the chaff, who can discern truth from propaganda,” supported by “reasonably well-resourced organisations when they go out to do their job.”
The financial difficulties of some media companies might be resolved through online retail opportunities e.g. newspapers using their readership base to sell holidays. In the future, media organisations are “not going to be places where people are particularly well paid,” he notes, nor will people find it easy to have “a structured career.”
While Brady is unsure of the media’s future shape, “the virtues obviously will be speed, freedom, inexpensiveness, universality,” while on the downside “it’ll be increasingly difficult to ascertain truth from assertion.”
As for his own future, “I enjoy the writing,” says the 62-year old, “and I suspect that if this book moves reasonably well, thank God it seems to be, then there could be further adventures of Joe Swallow and his colleagues around Dublin.”
Profile: Conor Brady
From Tullamore, Brady studied at Roscrea College before going to UCD, where he studied history and politics.
“I joined the Irish Times three times believe it or not,” he explains, working for it before and after a stint at RTÉ radio and television. After editing the Sunday Tribune from 1981-1982, he returned to the Irish Times, and was editor from 1986-2002. He then lectured in journalism in Smurfit Business College and was visiting professor at the John Jay College, New York. Brady was a Garda Ombudsman Commissioner from 2006-2011.
Married to Ann, he has two sons. “We have a little cottage down in the Slieve Blooms down in County Offaly. We like to go down there and walk a bit in the mountains, and read,” he says of spare time, which also includes swimming and travelling.
