“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

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Publication: SILENCE by Anthony J. Quinn

Anthony J. Quinn is one of the most under-appreciated of the new wave of Irish crime writers. SILENCE (Head of Zeus) is his fifth novel, and the third – following on from DISAPPEARED and BORDER ANGELS – to feature Northern Ireland police detective Celcius Daly. To wit:
A bizarre road accident propels Celcius Daly into an investigation that will reveal the truth about his mother’s death thirty years ago. Father Aloysius Walsh spent the last years of his life painstakingly collecting evidence of murder: a year-long killing spree of unparalleled savagery that blighted Ireland’s borderlands at the end of the 1970s. Pinned to his bedroom wall, a macabre map charts the grim territory of death: victims, weapons, wounds, dates - and somehow, amid the forest of pins and notes, he had discerned a pattern ...
  So why did Father Walsh deliberately drive through a cordon of policemen and off the road to his death? Why, when Inspector Celcius Daly arrives at the scene, does he find Special Branch already there? And why is his mother’s name on the priest’s map?
  The past poisons the present and Daly’s life will never be the same again.
  SILENCE has just been published in paperback. For a review of Anthony Quinn’s DISAPPEARED, clickety-click here

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