The Butler Who Did It

New Island appears to be in the mood to publish interesting Irish crime fiction novels of late - Sean Moncrieff’s latest offering being a case in point - and THE JUDAS KISS by David Butler is another. Quoth the blurb elves:

When Bluebottle runs away from a religious institution to live on the streets of Dublin, he is taken in by Malcolm, an ageing sensualist with a penchant for younger boys. But lust soon turns into full-blown sexual obsession. There follows the first of a series of increasingly violent encounters which lead relentlessly to disfigurement and bloody murder. As the first of the six narrators warns: this murder is messy - a stone inside a stocking sticky with blood. Besides this brutal attack, there are beatings, betrayals, perverse and illicit desires, and even a disfigurement - the Judas Kiss of the title. Dark territory indeed. THE JUDAS KISS is dark and moody. But the tale is relieved throughout not only by a pervasive black humour, but by the emergence of love in all its various guises.

  That sounds like the good stuff, alright, and the fact that David Butler is a poet and short story writer who has previously lectured in Spanish literature and published AN AID TO READING ULYSSES suggests that THE JUDAS KISS will be a crime novel with a difference. There’s a copy en route to CAP Towers as you read, and as always, we’ll keep you posted …