Chapters 10 with Pavel Barter, author of Runaway Joe

There are some books that arrive on the shelves with the quiet energy of a perfectly respectable hardback. Then there is Runaway Joe, which arrives looking as though it has come in from an international manhunt, changed its name at least twice, and possibly knows where the bodies are buried.

Pavel Barter's Runaway Joe is a gripping true-crime investigation into Joseph Maloney, the Irish-American fugitive accused of poisoning his wife, June, in Rochester, New York, in 1967. Maloney escaped custody, vanished, and later resurfaced in Ireland under the name Michael O'Shea. From there, the story swerves through Dublin, Laois, the Irish film industry, extradition law, vanished identities and the sort of real-life audacity that makes fiction feel underdressed.

It began as an RTÉ Documentary on One series and is now a book from Ériu that follows one of the FBI's oldest unsolved cases across six decades and the Atlantic. For anyone who likes their true crime properly reported, morally alert and impossible to put down, this is the one to clear an evening for. Possibly two. Possibly cancel plans and blame us.

Pavel is a Sunday Times writer, reporter and documentary maker whose radio work has won international recognition, including a New York Festivals Gold award for The Grief of a Nation, the story of an Irish photographer who captured the aftermath of JFK's assassination. In other words, he is exactly the sort of person you want following a cold case: curious, persistent, allergic to easy answers and, thankfully for us, willing to answer very important bookshop questions about Star Wars novelisations, Metallica, tea, coffee and whether Googling yourself is a euphemism.

We asked Pavel our Chapters 10. His answers suggest a man with sound instincts, dangerous musical energy and a healthy awareness that trying to write like Bukowski is probably best left to people with more dramatic livers.

 

Chapters 10 with Pavel Barter

What is the first book you bought yourself?

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the official novelisation of the film, by James Kahn, purchased when I was a kid with hard-earned pocket money. I’m not sure movie novelisations are still a thing, but what a fun gig for writers they must have been.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

You’re not Jack Kerouac and you’re definitely not Charles Bukowski. Your liver is intact, so maybe stop trying to write like them.

Did publishing your first book change your writing process?

Coming from a reportage background, writing a book made me more limber and loose with language without losing any of the journalistic veracity (I hope).

What were you most wrong about when you imagined being a writer?

I assumed publishing a book was like making a movie. It has a couple of weeks in theatres and then it might end up on a streaming platform, if you’re lucky. Your job is done and you move on to the next project. But book marketing is a long-term game. As long as it’s out there on the shelves, it’s a writer’s responsibility to keep talking about it.

Which three books do you think everyone should read?

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

 

Do you have a favourite book to gift and, if so, what is it?

Having a lot of friends and family with young children, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is a fail-safe.

What song always gets you on the dance floor?

Battery by Metallica.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee in the a.m. Tea p.m.

Do you Google yourself?

Is that a euphemism?

Why do you love Chapters?

Because it’s more than just a bookshop. It’s a social haunt, a vibrant event space, a cultural tonic in these troubled times.

Runaway Joe by Pavel Barter is published by Ériu.