“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

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Publication: GHOST FLIGHT by Mel Healy

GHOST FLIGHT is the latest offering in Mel Healy’s Moss Reid series, which concerns itself with “a gastronomic private eye whose main patch is around the Stoneybatter and Smithfield districts of Dublin.” To wit:
2008: The Irish economy is about to go belly up, and three Irish businessmen disappear in a light aircraft off the west coast of Ireland. There is no mayday message. No wreckage, no bodies, nothing.
  Six years later, Niamh McElhinney bumps into one of the missing men in the south of France. Then she, too, goes missing. Time to call Wilde & Reid Investigations …
  Stoneybatter private eye Moss Reid is back, in his most complicated case to date, as a slow journey down the Canal du Midi turns into a nightmare race to find a faceless killer.
  GHOST FLIGHT is the third in Irish writer Mel Healy’s series involving Moss Reid, the Dublin PI whose priorities in life are to “eat, drink and investigate – in that order”.
  For more on Mel Healy and Moss Reid, clickety-click here

Friday, January 23, 2015

One to Watch: ONLY WE KNOW by Karen Perry

The writing partnership Karen Perry (right) hit the ground running last year with a terrific debut psychological thriller, THE BOY THAT NEVER WAS, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing what they do with their follow-up offering, ONLY WE KNOW (Penguin). Quoth the blurb elves:
Kenya, 1982. The relentless sun beats down on the Maasai Mara. Three children, Nick, Luke and Katie, bored and hot, go down to the river alone. But when their innocent game by the banks of the river goes horribly wrong, their lives are changed forever and they are eternally bound by a shocking and suffocating secret.
  Dublin, 2013. Their secret is buried, but not forgotten, and when Luke goes missing in violent circumstances it becomes clear that their childhood mistakes have come back to haunt them . . .
  ONLY WE KNOW will be published on June 4.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

News: Stuart Neville and Jane Casey Shortlisted for Edgar Awards

It’s a hearty CAP Towers congratulations to Stuart Neville and Jane Casey, both of whom were nominated for Edgar awards when the shortlists were announced early today, January 21st. Stuart’s THE FINAL SILENCE was nominated in the Best Novel category, while Jane’s THE STRANGER YOU KNOW was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. To wit:
Best Novel
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Wolf by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster – Scribner)
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville (Soho Press)
Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown)
Coptown by Karin Slaughter (Penguin Randomhouse – Delacorte Press)

Mary Higgins Clark
A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton (Minotaur Books)
The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey (Minotaur Books)
Invisible City by Julia Dahl (Minotaur Books)
Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller (Minotaur Books)
The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)
  For the full run-down of all Edgar categories and nominees, clickety-click here

Monday, January 19, 2015

Local Heroes: Philip Davison

We’re all familiar with the huge strides taken by Irish crime fiction over the past decade or so, but there were quite a few Irish authors writing crime / mystery / thriller novels before it was fashionable and / or (koff) profitable.
  Philip Davison (author, playwright and screenwriter, and currently a member of Aosdána) is one of them, possibly overlooked in terms of his contribution to Irish crime writing because the hero of his four spy novels, Harry Fielding, was an ‘understrapper’ for MI5.
  Davison published four novels with Fielding as his protagonist: THE CROOKED MAN (1997), MCKENZIE’S FRIEND (2000), THE LONG SUIT (2003) and A BURNABLE TOWN (2006). The reviews, such as those below for MCKENZIE’S FRIEND, were rather impressive:
“Chilly, elegant and disconcertingly comic. Rather like a collaboration between two notable Green(e)s – Graham and Henry – and quite safely described as original.” ~ Literary Review

“Davison shares Beckett’s knack for making the down-at-the-heel appear surreal.” ~ Times Literary Supplement
  THE LONG SUIT, meanwhile, was compared with John le Carré, Len Deighton and that man Graham Greene again. You get the picture: we’re in the realm of the literary spy thriller. THE LONG SUIT opens thusly:
“I had my own troubles, some of which I had addressed. When they lifted me my plan had been to go to ground, let time pass and be vigilant. Like a Druid, I had come to count nights instead of days. I watched Clements talking to somebody at the end of the corridor. He was loud, but I couldn’t make out the words. The lower jaw seemed to have just the one spring action. He was like a thirsty dog drinking from a water pistol …”
  For more on Philip Davison, clickety-click here

UPDATE: Mel Healy has a very nice appraisal of Philip Davison’s style (along with a tangent or two about his food consumption) over here