“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

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Mid-Week Interweb Mash-Up: Being Honest, It’s Just A Pathetic Excuse To Use The Word ‘Baloohaha’

Nice to see Eoin McNamee (left) isn’t forgetting his crime roots, even if his up-comer, 12:33 (etc.), concerns itself with the surely-no-crime-involved death of Princess Diana: “When I started looking into the story, which I had never taken any particular interest in before, there was a kind of noir, murky atmosphere to it … I feel that, if the art is right, then the moral dimension of the book will follow that.” Well said, Big Mc … The Guru over at greencine.com seems to be impressed with the movie of Pat McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, which we consider Ireland’s The Killer Inside Me: “By the time Sinead O’Connor shows up as a vision of the Virgin Mary, dispensing bad advice for our protagonist, the movie’s already winnowed its way among the greatest – and strangest – coming-of-age films of all time,” says the Guru. Crikey – someone point that man in the direction of Colin McCabe’s tome on the movie (right), courtesy of the Cork University Press … Elsewhere, the dicks at Detectives Beyond Borders have been wondering about the great comic crime novels. “I'd make room for Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr as well as Bruen’s Brant and Roberts series,” says our intrepid investigator in the same breath as he mentions Joe Gores, Donald Westlake, Bill James and Janet Evanovich … There’s a pod-cast with Benjamin Black over at KRCW, in which Benjie very probably talks about writing ‘n’ stuff … Eurocrime offers its verdict on John Connolly’s The Unquiet: “Connolly is always good on tortured souls and tortured locations where evil resides and this is one of his most powerful atmospheric plots,” reckons Carla McKay … The Rap Sheet (scroll down) nailed Declan Hughes for its mammoth ‘You’re Still The One’ series, with Hughes nominating Alan Glynn’s Dark Fields (left) as his ‘smart and scary and brilliantly written’ underrated classic … Finally, Shane Hegarty was kind enough to plug Crime Always Pays over at his Present Tense blog, so we’re returning the favour, and ditto for FinleyNine, the interweb rapscallion who reckons ‘Sam Millar has discriminating taste’ … which is nice. Oh, and can we say ‘baloohaha’ one more time? Yes? Thank you.

1 comment:

Peter Rozovsky said...

" … Elsewhere, the dicks at Detectives Beyond Borders have been wondering about the great comic crime novels."

I thank you for the kind mention. My blog is a one-person operation, though. Just one dick here.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/