Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Kerrigan, Bateman, McGilloway, McKinty

Four reviews of forthcoming novels for your delectation, folks, all courtesy of today’s Sunday Indo, the novels in question being DARK TIMES IN THE CITY by Gene Kerrigan, MYSTERY MAN by (the Artist Formerly Known as Colin) Bateman, BLEED A RIVER DEEP by Brian McGilloway, and FIFTY GRAND by Adrian McKinty. To wit:

In one sense, it’s a shame that Gene Kerrigan hails from this parish, because you’re going to think I’m biased when I say that, with DARK TIMES IN THE CITY, Kerrigan has written one of the finest crime novels ever set in Ireland.
  Initially the story of Danny Callaghan, a Dublin ex-con who instinctively interferes in a gangland hit and suffers the consequences, DARK TIMES is a novel that gets under the skin of post-boom Ireland. The various settings are for the most part those urban wastelands by-passed by the boom, where people live cheek-by-jowl with the criminal fraternity, and where the notion of law and order is a sick joke. And yet, as with Kerrigan’s previous novels, LITTLE CRIMINALS and A MIDNIGHT CHOIR, the issues are not black-and-white, and the lines drawn are not between good and bad, or law and disorder. Kerrigan is more interested in exploring the concept of power, its use and abuse, and how those at the bottom of the pecking order, regardless of which side of the thin blue line they stand, are powerless – physically, financially and morally – when confronted with the juggernaut of power corrupted absolutely …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …