“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

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty

Take Parker. Put him in a Cormac McCarthy novel and give him a sense of humour. Okay, now you have the basics of Michael Forsythe, a young Belfast lad knocking around the lower levels of an Irish mob in New York during the early ’90s. Cynical, smart, funny, ambitious and ruthless, Michael has what it takes to rise to the top, although it’s that kind of charisma that finds him taking liberties with the girlfriend of the boss and sent on a drug deal to Mexico, there to be double-crossed, framed and left for dead. Sketched out like that, Dead I Well May Be sounds like a throwback / homage to the B-movie noirs of the ’40s and ’50s, but what makes it one of the most invigorating novels of the last decade is Michael’s distinctive voice as he effortlessly blends poetry, Greek philosophy, quantum physics, social observation, pop music lyrics and a whole lot more in a deadpan delivery that is the narrative equivalent of a Lee Marvin stare. Beautifully detailed, grittily realistic and infused with an intoxicating sense of imminent apocalypse throughout, the first instalment in the ‘Dead’ trilogy (The Dead Yard and The Bloomsday Dead complete the triptych) is the kind of novel to restore your faith in the power of storytelling. Because McKinty doesn’t just tell a great story, which is a skill in itself; he’s a great storyteller, and that’s a rare gift. - Declan Burke

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