“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, October 16, 2007

Into Every Life A Little Shadow Must Fall

The Irish Indo continues its big-up of contemporary Irish women writers, Rose Doyle’s SHADOWS WILL FALL being the fifth offering in the series. Quoth the Indo’s blurb elves:
SHADOWS WILL FALL by Rose Doyle [is] a contemporary story of murder, betrayal and love. Set in Dun Laoghaire, it opens with the discovery of a young woman’s body in the doorway of the morgue. Evil casts long shadows; in this case those of two earlier murders -- one in Dun Laoghaire in 1953, the other in Coney Island, New York, in 1963. Love and sex also cast their own particular shadows in this novel, hailed as Rose Doyle’s best to date. It works on many levels -- as crime story, social commentary, historical archive and love story -- and it has been lauded as a novel “that men should read and women will love”.
Nice to see the Indo embracing the spirit of journalistic ecumenicism so wholeheartedly, given that Rose is a working scribe with the Irish Times. Meanwhile, Crime Always Pays continues its rather lack-lustre campaign to have the Indo feature Irish crime writers in its next series, our list of contenders (excluding novels in their first flush of publication) running thusly:
IRISH CRIME NOVELS: TOP 20
1. Quinn by Seamus Smyth
2. The Guards by Ken Bruen
3. Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty
4. The Dead by Ingrid Black
5. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
6. The Polling of the Dead by John Kelly
7. Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan
8. Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman
9. The Guilty Heart by Julie Parsons
10. Bogmail by Patrick McGinley
11. Death the Pale Rider by Vincent Banville
12. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
13. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
14. In the Forest by Edna O’Brien
15. The Colour of Blood by Brian Moore
16. Revenge by KT McCaffrey
17. The Assassin by Liam O’Flaherty
18. Resurrection Man by Eoin McNamee
19. Death Call by TS O’Rourke
20. A Carra King by John Brady
If we’ve left out anyone you think should be included, feel free to lambaste us in your own good time. Don’t worry about hurting our feelings; we’ll just vent our frustrations on the elves later on …
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ERRGGGHHHHHHH

If you could NOT update the list any further for a couple of months then himself (who earns the cash around here) will be grateful, my bank manager will be relieved and the poor postie lumping these boxes of books around will do cartwheels for a while.

Have you ANY idea what postings such as this do to the soul of a poor book addict like moi?

October 17, 2007 at 5:08 AM

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