“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

Friday, February 7, 2014

A Place Of Her Own

There’s a new Tana French (right) novel on the way, although the bad news is that we’ll have to wait until August to see THE SECRET PLACE (Hodder & Stoughton). What’s it all about? Quoth Tana:
Q: What are you working on now?

A: “I’m partway through my fifth book, which is currently called The Secret Place. The narrator this time is Stephen Moran, Frank’s young sidekick from Faithful Place. Frank’s daughter, Holly, now sixteen, shows up at Stephen’s work with a postcard she found on the noticeboard where girls in her school can post their secrets anonymously —a postcard with a photo of a murdered teenage boy, and the caption ‘I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.’ And this time Frank does come back …”
  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

One To Watch: Anna Sweeney

It’s looking like it’s going to be a very interesting year for debutant Irish crime fiction in 2014, with Liz Nugent, Siobhan MacDonald and Sinéad Crowley already lined up to publish. Another name to conjure with is Anna Sweeney, who publishes DEADLY INTENT (Severn House) later this month. Quoth the blurb elves:
Maureen lies unconscious on a lonely track. Her husband blames a fellow holidaymaker at Nessa McDermott’s country house on Ireland’s enchanting Beara peninsula. Two days later, a man's body is found, strangled and dumped. Amid a frenzy of police, media and family pressures, former journalist Nessa has to find her own answers - but meanwhile, ambitious young policeman Redmond Joyce is also hellbent on identifying the murderer, and conflict between them grows as they close in on the horrifying truth. Translated from the Gaelic, this novel introduces a talented author with keen observation and detail, and marks the beginning of a series with Nessa and her ambitious policeman acquaintance.
  To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve had an Irish crime novel translated from Irish into English. Of course, ‘the best of my knowledge’ isn’t exactly encyclopaedic … If anyone can set me straight as to previous examples, I’m all ears.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Hungry Like The Wolf

A new novel from John Connolly is always a treat around these here parts, and something we missed out on in 2013, so there’s an added anticipation to THE WOLF IN WINTER (Hodder & Stoughton), the latest Charlie Parker story. To wit:
The next pulse-pounding thriller in John Connolly’s internationally bestselling Charlie Parker series.
  The community of Prosperous, Maine has always thrived when others have suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy, its children’s future secure. It shuns outsiders. It guards its own. And at the heart of the Prosperous lie the ruins of an ancient church, transported stone by stone from England centuries earlier by the founders of the town …
  But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator Charlie Parker to Prosperous. Parker is a dangerous man, driven by compassion, by rage, and by the desire for vengeance. In him the town and its protectors sense a threat graver than any they have faced in their long history, and in the comfortable, sheltered inhabitants of a small Maine town, Parker will encounter his most vicious opponents yet.
  Charlie Parker has been marked to die so that Prosperous may survive.
  Prosperous, and the secret that it hides beneath its ruins …
  THE WOLF IN WINTER will be published in April. For all the details, clickety-click here