Mcloughlin, Tim 1959-

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McLOUGHLIN, Tim 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Brooklyn, NY. Education: Attended New York University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brooklyn, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Akashic Books, PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009.

CAREER:

Kings County Supreme Court, Brooklyn, NY, court officer.

WRITINGS:

Heart of the Old Country, Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A novel about an Irish-American man who moves to Manhattan to become a successful graphic artist, but eventually returns to the Spanish neighborhood where he grew up.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tim McLoughlin works as a court officer in the Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York. He attended New York University but had to leave when his father suffered from a heart attack. When McLoughlin published his first novel, Heart of the Old Country, the comparisons began between his life and that of his protagonist, Mike. Like McLoughlin, Mike grows up in Brooklyn and, instead of going to college, ends up driving for an illegal car service; a job that brings him in close contact with the violence of the mob world. Unlike Mike, McLoughlin went on to work in the Brooklyn court system. When life as a court officer began to wear on him, McLoughlin enrolled in a YMCA class with A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries author Kaylie Jones; the class encouraged McLoughlin to begin work on Heart of the Old Country.

Heart of the Old Country follows Mike as he negotiates his way between neighborhood gangsters, a marriage-minded girlfriend, a Manhattan college-girl, and his tough-guy father. Most of Mike's time is spent driving elderly ladies around and playing cards with his fellow drivers, until a botched mob delivery and murder complicate his life. Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly described the "zippy first novel … [as] part coming-of-age story, part thriller." On the Pop Matters Web site, John Kenyon called Heart of the Old Country "a mixture of documentary non-fiction and Scorsese's 'Mean Streets.'" A Kirkus Reviews critic found the book "Carefully crafted, with authentic Brooklyn flavor," but lacking in "cheap thrills." On the other hand, McLoughlin's decision to focus more on character than cheap thrills led a Publishers Weekly critic to proclaim, "The novel's greatest achievement is its tender depiction of Michael as a would-be tough guy … undergoing a a painful education in the real world."