“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, May 10, 2007

This Week We're Reading ... Sideswipe and Skinny Dip

Yep, the weather broke, damn its beautiful eyes, so we took ourselves off to the sunnier (albeit significantly seedier) climes of Florida, courtesy of Charles Willeford's Swideswipe, the second in the Hoke Moseley police procedurals ... except Hoke's bailed out of the force after a nervous breakdown. Be warned: deceptively laidback until the cataclysmic final chapters, Sideswipe is a very slow burner. "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford," says Elmore Leonard, and few of these here folks will disagree ... Anyhoo, it being so balmy in Florida, we stuck around with Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip, which pretty much retreads every book he's ever written but does it with some style: "a screwball delight so full of bright, deft, beautifully honed humor that it places Mr. Hiaasen in the company of Preston Sturges, Woody Allen and S. J. Perelman," says the New York Times above the racket of a host of reviewers clamouring to agree. Oh, and while we're on the subject, Hiaasen's latest, Nature Girl, is on its way ... which is nice.

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