“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

The Weekly Seamus Smyth Update: No One, But No One, Is Bigger In Japan

Question: how come Seamus Smyth's Quinn wasn't THE Irish crime fiction success of the last decade? He's big in Japan, for one - he hit the Top 3 in the Japanese critics' list two years running, 2001 and 2002, fending off the likes of Thomas Harris, Scott Turow, Michael Connelly, Denis Lehane and Jeffrey Deaver in the process, AND the London Times raved it up - "For all its lightning exposition of Quinn's swaggering amorality, this first novel proves Smyth to be a truly original, febrile talent." And as if that wasn't enough, Quinn was Crime Always Pays' inaugural Lost Classic. Like, what more does the guy have to do?

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