“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, September 6, 2007

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Sleeping Dogs Lie by Sylvester Young

“So this thing involved a lotta people who work for different government agencies? Man, Oliver Stone would have a field day.”
Sylvester Young, Sleeping Dogs Lie
Ne’er a truer word was ever spoken: Sleeping Dogs Lie will surely become a byword for paranoid conspiracy thrillers. Very much a novel of its time, the tale follows the fortunes of Robbie Walker as he departs New York in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy, headed for Georgia with his fellow fugitive from justice and long-term friend, the ex-IRA man and cold-blooded killer Danny Maguire. Hiding out in the rural township of Petra, Robbie – English-born, to Jamaican parents – wonders why Danny has taken them to such a Godforsaken place, only to discover that Danny’s motives have been less than pure when a murderous plot concocted by rogue elements of the Colombian paramilitary group FARC collides with an investigation by a shadowy anti-terrorist American secret agency, ‘the Seventeenth’. Young’s first-person narrative is delivered in a beguiling patois that reeks of authenticity, the voice luring you down into the complex workings of a mind struggling to forge a path through the disintegrating remnants of what is quickly becoming a wasted life. Squeezed on one side by government-sponsored threats, on the other by loyalty to his old comrade, and coping with the casual violence of overt racism while trying to bail a new friend out of a murder frame-up, Walker is run ragged by the excess of adrenaline coursing through his system as he battles, above all else, the will-sapping paranoia that wafts up out of every line. A punchy, cynical and relentlessly political novel, Sleeping Dogs Lie is as courageous a statement of intent as it is a gripping thriller.- Declan Burke

This review is republished by the kind permission of Euro Crime. Sleeping Dogs Lie is published by Raldon Books.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My comment is this: time to start a nomination form going on this website for the Golden Spiders awards. Or at the very least, a link. You know it makes sense. Time to blow your own trumpet, me thinks.
Bobby the Rookie