“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Tremayne Man

Rejoice, o ye fans of Peter Tremayne (right) – Dancing With Demons, the latest Sister Fidelma mystery and the sixquillionth in the series, is due out in hardback on September 6. The woman who puts the ‘nun’ into ‘nundefatigable’, Fidelma is investigating the murder of the High King of Ireland this time around, and hoping to prevent civil war breaking out in 7th Century Ireland in the process. So why is Sister Fidelma such a (ahem) habit- forming read? Quoth Peter, via the Bridlington Free Press:
“The fascinating law system and culture of 7th Century Ireland, sadly, was little known when I started writing the books – the amazing position that women enjoyed, the fact that they could divorce on equal terms with men, that women could aspire to all the professions and be lawyers, doctors, poets and so on, a situation not really paralleled in other European societies at that time, seems to be one reason why the books attract attention. I was even worried about how I could put this across to readers in the English language but it seems to carry into all cultures. The fact that, as of this time, Fidelma has gone into 15 languages, from Japanese to Russian, Bulgarian to Spanish and so on, has been surprising. It seems that readers find a resonance with Fidelma, whom Books Ireland have described as ‘an Irish heroine for both the seventh and the twenty-first centuries’.”
Well, what are you waiting for? Get thee to a nunnery, people …

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