“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

Friday, August 22, 2014

Publication: THE DEAD PASS by Colin Bateman

It’s with some relief that we note The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman – i.e., Bateman – has been reunited with his first name. For lo! The new Bateman novel, THE DEAD PASS (Hachette), appears under the moniker ‘Colin Bateman’. Better still, it’s a new Dan Starkey story. To wit:
Hired to find the missing son of retired political activist Moira Doherty, Dan Starkey knows his new case is going to be challenging. Billy ‘the Bear’ Doherty isn’t an easy man to find - a criminal with a nasty drug habit, his mum is convinced he’s been murdered.
  But when Moira herself is killed, her body found floating in the waters under Londonderry’s Peace Bridge, Dan finds himself in the middle of a deadly game of cat and mouse.
  Already in unfamiliar territory, Starkey is quickly embroiled in the city’s porn and drug fuelled underworld, where a new generation of gangster terrorist is intent on creating mayhem their predecessors could only dream of ...
  For all the details, clickety-click here

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Publication: ECHOBEAT by Joe Joyce

Joe Joyce’s ECHOLAND introduced us to Paul Duggan, an Irish army intelligence officer operating in Dublin during ‘the Emergency’ – known to the rest of the world as WWII – in 1940. ECHOBEAT (Liberties Press) is the sequel:
Christmas, 1940. France is under German control, Britain is in danger and the United States has yet to join the war. Ireland, meanwhile, has succeeded in staying neutral – so far. Reports of a British troop buildup in the North have raised fears that Ireland is facing an invasion by its neighbour. And Germany’s bombing of Dublin early in the new year suggests Berlin is trying to send a message, but the meaning is unclear. Paul Duggan and his colleagues in G2, the intelligence unit of the Irish army, have to decipher Germany’s intentions fast: any miscalculation could be fatal. One man who could answer their questions is Hermann Goertz, the chief German spy in Ireland, who has been on the run for almost a year. Finding him is imperative. Meanwhile, Duggan is also running an undercover operation spying on German fliers interned in Ireland when they’re out on parole. Planned as a routine operation, it turns out to be anything but – and changes Duggan’s life dramatically. Dublin shines through Joyce’s prose as his characters play a diplomatic chess game to keep Ireland out of the war. You won’t be able to put down this thriller until you reach its heart-wrenching finale. Echobeat is the second book in the Echoland series, which features Duggan, his Special Branch friend Peter Gifford, and a cast of political and intelligence operators in Ireland during the treacherous days of the Second World War.
  For all the details, clickety-click here

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

News: Adrian McKinty Shortlisted for 2014 Ned Kelly Awards

Hearty congrats to Adrian McKinty, the Australia-based Irish crime writer who has been nominated for the 2014 Ned Kelly Awards – Australia’s crime fiction gong – for IN THE MORNING I’LL BE GONE (Serpent’s Tail). It’s the second time McKinty has been shortlisted for the Ned Kelly; he was shortlisted last year for the second in the Sean Duffy series, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET. Quoth the judging panel:
“In his use of humour with the grim realities of Belfast in 1984, coupled with a wonderfully constructed locked room mystery, McKinty has produced something really quite extraordinary. There’s a fine line between social commentary and compelling mystery and not many writers, crime or literary, can do both.”
  For more, including the full list of nominees, clickety-click here

Monday, August 18, 2014

Publication: THE SECRET PLACE by Tana French

Her first offering since the superb, award-winning BROKEN HARBOUR (2012), Tana French’s latest novel is THE SECRET PLACE (Hodder & Stoughton), a typically quirky police procedural set in an exclusive Dublin boarding school for girls. To wit:
The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.
  The caption says, ‘I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM’.
  Detective Stephen Moran hasn’t seen Holly Mackey since she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she’s sixteen and she’s shown up outside his squad room, with a photograph and a story.
  Even in her exclusive boarding school, in the graceful golden world that Stephen has always longed for, bad things happen and people have secrets. The previous year, Christopher Harper, from the neighbouring boys’ school, was found murdered on the grounds. And today, in the Secret Place - the school noticeboard where girls can pin up their secrets anonymously - Holly found the card.
  Solving this case could take Stephen onto the Murder squad. But to get it solved, he will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - tough, prickly, an outsider, everything Stephen doesn’t want in a partner. And he will have to find a way into the strange, charged, mysterious world that Holly and her three closest friends inhabit and disentangle the truth from their knot of secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn’t want to hear.
  For all the details, clickety-click here