“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, March 10, 2016

First Look: THE PLEA by Steve Cavanagh

Steve Cavanagh’s debut THE DEFENCE was published last year to universal acclaim, with yours truly describing it in the Irish Times as “a lot like a courtroom drama Lee Child might write about Jack Reacher’s younger, hotter-headed brother . . . a foot-to-the-floor thriller that pulls out with tyres smoking and takes no prisoners until it judders to a halt 400 pages later.” The follow-up, THE PLEA (Orion), also features that novel’s protagonist, New York lawyer Eddie Flynn, and the set-up reads a lot like this:
Fraud. Blackmail. Murder. It’s all in a day’s work for Eddie Flynn.
  For years, major New York law firm Harland & Sinton has operated a massive global fraud. When a client of the firm, David Child, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con-artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to secure Child as his client and force him to testify against the firm.
  Eddie’s not a man to be coerced into representing a guilty client, but the FBI have incriminating files on Eddie’s wife, and if Eddie won’t play ball, she’ll pay the price.
  When Eddie meets Child he’s convinced the man is innocent, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With the FBI putting pressure on him to secure the plea, Eddie must find a way to prove Child’s innocence while keeping his wife out of danger - not just from the FBI, but from the firm itself.
  THE PLEA will be published on May 19. For more, clickety-click here

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