Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Caffrey Conversation Crew!

It's the middle of March, Silbrith is posting about Irish threads in her most recent stories, and that means our characters are donning green and preparing to wish you a Happy St. Patrick's Day. It also means I'm reflecting on the Irish elements in my stories, and how they became part of the Caffrey Conversation. Let's start with Neal, and how he reminded me of an iconic character in J.D. Robb's In Death series -- mysteries set in New York City a few decades in the future.

Before White Collar debuted in 2009, I'd read the first dozen or more books in J.D. Robb's series, where one of the main characters is Roarke. He's a devastatingly handsome, dark-haired, blue-eyed con artist and thief from Ireland, who has mostly mended his ways. Readers' forums for the stories fantasized about casting Pierce Brosnan in the role. Roarke has an unlikely relationship with the main character, a police detective named Eve Dallas.

It's no surprise then, that a TV show featuring a devastatingly handsome, dark-haired, blue-eyed con artist and thief -- and his unlikely partnership with an FBI agent who wants him to mend his ways -- made me think back to those mysteries I'd been reading. If there is ever a movie or TV version of the books, Matt Bomer would make an outstanding Roarke, and it's fun to imagine Neal Caffrey as a member of the boisterous Irish family that eventually makes an appearance in the books. When I was mentally casting an actor to play Neal's uncle David Caffrey in my series, I thought back to my visits to In Death forums and selected Pierce Brosnan.

Therefore Neal always had Irish roots in my personal head canon. When I set the kid!fic portion of Caffrey Envoy on St. Patrick's Day, I made reference to his mother's family being Irish. Then later in chapter 29 of Caffrey Flashback, his maternal grandfather goes into more detail about the family's history. (See my earlier post about Neal's grandparents.) I thought that coming from a family of Irish immigrants helped explain Edmund Caffrey's attitudes and actions. In an earlier scene, Neal's grandmother Irene Caffrey mentions another of Edmund's Irish traits: the love of a good story. Could Neal's con artist skills have been inherited from a family of storytellers? I certainly like to think so. Of course, Irene will also point to her skills as an actress as another source.

The Irish threads continued in my later stories. In Caffrey Disclosure, I mention a trip Neal's cousin Henry made to Ireland to meet distant relatives, and again in Caffrey Aloha there are references to family ties to Ireland when Neal describes an Anastasia con. My last shout-out to Neal's Irish connections was in the Spring Break chapter of Caffrey Vignettes, where Neal celebrates St. Patrick's Day with his cousins but refuses to drink green beer.

I'm delighted that Silbrith has taken the Irish thread and run with it. See her latest post on the Celtic Connection.

Neal and his uncle David on Pinterest:




If you're interested in the In Death series and the Roarke character, you can visit the series' wiki. Keep in mind that these are murder mysteries with disturbed & disturbing killers. One of the reasons I migrated to White Collar and the Caffrey Conversation was to enjoy mysteries without the body count.