“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, September 8, 2008

Around The Web In 80 Seconds*

Being a pick-‘n’-mix selection from the interweb of stuff we were too busy / lazy to plug when we should have, to wit:
  Gerard Brennan over at CSNI mocks up a cover for Adrian McKinty’s forthcoming FIFTY GRAND (right), and does a damn fine job. GB is plugging the fact that Serpent’s Tail will be published FIFTY GRAND this side of the pond, and he’s also got an excellent interview with John McAllister of LINE OF FLIGHT fame going on. All of which is very nice …
  Over at the Sunday Indo, Alison Walsh has a piece on forthcoming Irish novels of interest, among which are the latest from Andrew Nugent, Alex Barclay, Benny Blanco and Sir Kenneth of Bruen …
  A couple of new blogs for your delectation: the inimitable Book Witch has branched out into non-book matters of culture and whatnot with CultureWitch – just don’t dare ask who Roger Whitaker is. Meanwhile, Michael Donnellan embarks on The Great Search for Truth, with the latest post pertaining to ‘Roscommon’s Roswell’. Erm, Michael? Those little green men in Roscommon are actually the indigenous natives …
  Upward and onward, and KT McCaffrey lets us know that he’ll be swanking around Trim Castle Hotel, Co. Meath, on September 20th, spraffing away about crime fiction in the rather elevated company of Laura Wilson. Nice. KT? Tell Laura we love her. For all in the info on the day, jump on over to KT’s interweb malarkey
  Finally, we haven’t mentioned John McFetridge on Crime Always Pays for, oh, it must be minutes now. John, for those of you recently arriving, will play Stadler to my Waldorf as we partake in a road-trip from Toronto to Baltimore, via NY, Vermont, Boston and Philly, in the week leading up to the Baltimore Bouchercon. I’ll be posting up an itinerary sometime this week, but in the meantime I’m wondering if the guy ever gets fed up being compared to Elmore Leonard. To wit:
“It’s natural to compare McFetridge to Elmore Leonard. He has a similar deadpan humour and a knack for evoking complex, three-dimensional lives with just a few lines of dialogue. It would be equally apt to compare his examination of urban life with that of the television series, The Wire, in the way the cops and criminals operate on parallel tracks, crime and big business are synonymous, and the portrait of a city, bit by bit, comes together in all its squalid, teeming glory.” – Barbara Fister, Reviewing the Evidence
“This top-notch Canadian novel does noir with a wry cynicism that will remind you of Elmore Leonard … The sharp and funny dialogue on both sides is sometimes so terse it’s hard to follow – but well worth it.” – Jane Dickinson, Rocky Mountain News
  John? Just say the word and I can have a cease-and-desist out on the Elmore Leonard references in three minutes flat …

* Providing you don’t actually click on any of the links

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bet you don't know who Roger Whittaker is, either! Even though he lives just down the road from you.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dec,
Congrats on a millenium of blogging (so to speak)!
Rafe

Declan Burke said...

Of course I know who Roger Whittaker is, ma'am. He used to be a show-jumper.

Cheers, Dec

Declan Burke said...

Rafe? Surely not the Rafe McGregor who'll be Q&A'd here tomorrow? Small world, and no mistake ...

Cheers, Dec