“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, June 1, 2017

Review: HOFFER by Tim Glencross

Aesthete, fraud, mooch and fixer, William Hoffer is the latest in a long line of charming sociopaths cast in the mould of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. Tim Glencross’s Hoffer (John Murray) opens in contemporary London, with William Hoffer moving in the rarefied circles of international finance, friend to aristocrats and confidante of Russian oligarchs. Ex-West Point, ex-CIA, Hoffer’s shady past as a go-between facilitating the money-laundering of Mexican drug cartels catches up with him when Diana Dominguez Saavedra, the daughter of one of Hoffman’s old sparring partners in Mexico, is discovered dead in his Onslow Square flat. Languidly paced, deliciously arch in tone, Hoffer delivers an anti-hero who is indeed a 21st century Tom Ripley, a genteel killer who makes the rounds of London’s galleries and clubs, all the while frantically plotting his escape from the web spun by his lies. What elevates Glencross above his fellow Highsmith disciples, however, is the novel’s bone-dry humour. “The last time I experienced something similar had been a cantina in Oaxaca,” says Hoffer of a dizzy spell, “the sort of place where the urinal by the bar was not a Duchampian whimsy.” ~ Declan Burke

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Launch: ONE BAD TURN by Sinead Crowley

Sinead Crowley launches ONE BAD TURN (Quercus) next week, said tome being the third in her series of Dublin-set psychological thrillers featuring DS Claire Boyle, with both of first two novels shortlisted for the best crime novel gong at the Irish Book Awards. The launch details:
Wednesday, June 7th, at 7pm
Dubray Books, Grafton Street, Dublin 2
  Quoth the blurb elves:
Being held hostage at gunpoint by her childhood friend is not Dr Heather Gilmore’s idea of a good day at work. It only gets worse when she hears that her nineteen-year-old daughter Leah has been kidnapped.
  Sergeant Claire Boyle wasn’t expecting to get caught up in a hostage situation during a doctor’s appointment. When it becomes apparent that the kidnapping is somehow linked to the hostage-taker, a woman called Eileen Delaney, she is put in charge of finding the missing girl.
  What happened between Eileen and Heather to make Eileen so determined to ruin her old friend? Claire Boyle must dig up the secrets from their pasts to find out - and quickly, because Leah is still missing, and time is running out to save her.