Although the John Devlin character in Declan Lynch’s new novel The Ponzi Man has echoes of numerous figures who crashed and burned during Ireland’s financial crisis, the author is wary of the book being seen as some kind of Celtic Tiger allegory.

“Someone said to me that the book is an anti-tragedy,” notes Lynch. “Tragedy is a thing in which the hero is undone by some fatal flaw in his character. Whereas with this guy, he’s already undone, and the book is about putting him back together again. That was just an instinct of mine, I didn’t set out to do it like that, but I thought it was a good description. I don’t want to nail it too much to the Celtic Tiger, although clearly that is the background against which it was done. I would like to be as universal as possible – it is about that world of gamblers and men going down the tubes.”

Gambling addiction has become one of the hot topics in Irish society over the past number of years, with numerous sports people and other public figures discussing their experiences with the problem. It’s an area Lynch finds hugely fascinating.
“I’ve written a great deal about it,” he says. “I actually wrote a non-fiction book about online gambling called Free Money. But you can’t write a novel about something like online gambling, it just won’t work. A novel has to be about 40 different things. In a way, you have to create a whole world if it’s to be any good. So there are many other elements in the book, all of which come together to create something bigger. Sure, the main guy is an addictive gambler, but in the course of the book he reflects on many other things as well, and he encounters a lot of other stuff just to do with the meaning of life in general.”

Presumably, Declan’s non-fiction book about online gambling fed into the creation of The Ponzi Man.
“I am fascinated by how much the mainstream media has ignored the subject,” he says. “They only visit it from time to time and then move away again. It is a global phenomenon of astonishing potency. A point I’ve made before is that the two great forces of our time our radical Islam and online gambling. In a way, they’re mirror images of each other – a lot of young men involved, the internet is utilised and so on. Weirdly enough, Islam is particularly opposed to gambling – and they’ve got it right! They believe it is the most dangerous of all the vices, and they may be correct about that.”
The novel is notable for its compelling storyline – the question of whether or not John will gamble again is a simple but powerful narrative hook.

“Another person described the book to me as a spiritual thriller,” says Declan. “In the sense that, when John is grappling with the question of will he or won’t he, it’s like a thriller – but a thriller of the soul. Dostoyevsky would have been a great man for that; his characters were wrestling with these internal dilemmas, and I love all that. People would say that I write about addiction, which I do, but I would hope it also relates to these greater existential questions. Will I or won’t I have a drink is almost not too different from will I or I won’t I kill myself. It’s based around the great issues – to be or not to be. Alcohol or gambling is just a heightened form of that.”
With The Ponzi Man, Declan is essentially trying to offer a fully rounded portrait of a character involved in shady activity.

“Of course, what’s happened to him has happened to a lot of people in the financial world,” he says. “What I was trying to do was imagine one of these guys with a soul. Most of these guys actually are assholes – they’re terrible fuckers, and they are justly despised. But I was trying to imagine what it’s like if one of these guys isn’t like that. To some extent, we have a certain awareness of this through seeing someone like Nick Leeson.
“On the whole, he seems like a fairly okay bloke, who was just somehow caught up in this insanity. Now, obviously the book isn’t based on him, but there are examples out there of people who have got caught up in these things, and who are not just cunts, basically. They’re people who actually have some level of humanity, and my character would be in that sort of vein.”

Declan, of course, is a noted football fan and did a fine job chronicling the Irish team’s golden era in his book Days of Heaven: Italia ’90 and the Charlton Years. With Ireland having met (our relatively) modest expectations, presumably he enjoyed the summer’s European championships.
“There is nothing quite like a summer football tournament,” enthuses Declan. “Nothing will ever be like Italia ’90 – for anything like that, a load of different things have to come together. But a summer tournament, particularly with Ireland involved, is deeply relaxing and you live in a different world for a few weeks. It was great, and we only realise when we go through these terrible summers without a football tournament how much we need it.”
 
The Ponzi Man is out now, published by Hachette Ireland