“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

Monday, July 11, 2016

Books: BLOOD FOR BLOOD by J.M. Smyth

All three regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Seamus Smyth and his ferocious debut novel QUINN (1999). We’ve been waiting quite a while for a follow-up, but – a trumpet parp there, maestro, if you will – it’s finally arrived. To wit:
‘Care’. There’s a word if ever I heard one. I looked it up in a dictionary once. It had a lot of definitions – but not one that applied to me and Sean ...
  Red has survived the barbarity and abuse of the orphanage. His twin brother Sean has not been so lucky. With a sworn oath to avenge his brother’s murder, Red kidnaps a policeman’s daughter and leaves her to be brought up in care, to suffer like he and Sean did. But this is just the first part of Red’s plan for revenge against all those who took their freedom.
  Now, twenty years later, the time has come. The kidnapped girl has grown up and left the orphanage, never knowing who her real parents are or the part she’ll now play in Red’s shocking revenge. And for those who have been living their lives in peace, with faded memories of twin boys who were put into care years ago, life is about to descend into hell.
  But with the criminal underworld, the police and an unexpected serial killer on the scene, sometimes even the best laid plans go awry…
  To read a sample from BLOOD FOR BLOOD, clickety-click here