“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

Thursday, September 15, 2011

From Russia With Blood

I mentioned last week that William Ryan’s THE BLOODY MEADOW gets its Irish launch today, at O’Mahony’s Bookshop, 120 O’Connell Street, Limerick, and the mood should be buoyant, to say the least, given the early buzz. To wit:
“THE HOLY THIEF was both bleak and savage … In an interesting change of pace which suggests the author has more than a formulaic series planned, in this second instalment Ryan has produced a film-noir-ish rewrite of the old-fashioned locked-room mystery, complete with creepily gripping, and ultimately gruesome, cops and robbers chase through the great catacombs on which Odessa sits, while Stalin’s man-made terror-famine, which scorched through the Ukraine half a decade before the book opens, is only gestured at, in elliptical speech and ultimately in the characters’ motivations.” - The Spectator
  Tasty. And there’s more:
“THE HOLY THIEF, set in Stalin’s Russia, was one of last year’s most impressive crime fiction debuts. THE BLOODY MEADOW, William Ryan’s follow-up, does not disappoint … Ryan has obviously done much research into that sinister period of Russian history and manages to convey its claustrophobic atmosphere brilliantly.” - The Times
  All of which is very nice indeed; consider this fan’s appetite well and truly whetted. For more of the same, clickety-click here

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