“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, October 3, 2013

Review: TAMPA by Alissa Nutting

Celeste Price, the narrator of Alissa Nutting’s debut novel Tampa (Faber & Faber, €14.99), is a high school English teacher in Florida. Married to a local police officer, Celeste is friendly, helpful and dedicated in her vocation. Respectability personified, she harbours a dark secret: Celeste has made it her life’s work to put herself in a position where she can prey sexually on 14-year-old boys. It’s a chilling tale in many respects, not least because Celeste suffers no crisis of conscience about her deviant behaviour and the effect it might have on the young men she targets, but it’s very difficult for the reader to dislike Celeste herself. Her first-person voice is charming, self-deprecating and witty, the amiable tone drawing the reluctantly complicit reader deeper and deeper into her immorality. There are echoes of Humbert Humbert and Tom Ripley to be heard here, and also Jim Thompson’s charming psychopath Lou Ford (Celeste’s husband is called Ford), but Nutting’s reinvention of the taboo-breaking femme fatale results in a self-determining female protagonist reminiscent of those created in recent years by Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott. That said, Celeste Price is a unique creation and Tampa is a singular tale. It may well be the most challenging crime novel you’ll read all year. – Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the monthly crime fiction column in the Irish Times. Also reviewed were the latest offerings from Jo Nesbo, Nele Neuhaus and Joe Joyce.

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