


“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
“David (Fickling) is insisting on publishing my just-finished fourth book ahead of Solace of the Road, so we’ve done a sudden switch in schedule. Number four is called Bog Child and it’s set on the north-south Irish border in 1981 ... and yes, it is eeerieee (I hope). Now it’s off to New York City to research follow-up to London Eye. My publishers are keen to have my young sleuths Ted and Kat back on another case ... and I can’t wait. I have an art heist in mind this time.”You go, gal. Just don’t forget to come back to us, eh?
“I can’t say I enjoyed reading 12:23: Paris: 31st August 1997, but then I was prejudiced against it before I began. A fictionalised story based on the real life events of that famous car crash in which Diana Spencer lost her life struck me as a bit tasteless, even if it has been 10 years since it happened.”Meanwhile, over at the Sunday Times, John Dugdale was beating a remarkably similar dead horse:
“12:23 is strong on atmosphere and the seedy, humdrum reality of bottom-feeder spying. It seems indecently early, however, to be stitching its central event into fiction (most recent “faction” novels are set at least 25 years ago); and while reliance on a conspiracy theory for the portrayal of the crash is handy for shaping a thriller plot, it does little for the novel’s credibility.”Hmmmm, smells like a conspiracy to us. Two questions, folks: One, it was okay for the Princess of Wails to spin the entire world a fiction while she was alive, but no one is allowed write about her now she’s dead, or at least not for 25 years after the event – is that correct? Two, how come Elton John didn’t get this kind of grief?
“Declan Burke’s The Big O carries on the tradition of Irish noir with its Elmore Leonard-like style. Here the dialogue is as slick as an ice run, the plot is nicely intricate, and the character drawing is spot on. There is a large list of folk involved, from Karen, who does stick-ups, through Rossi, who is Joe Pesci to a T if the book is ever filmed, through Ray, the phlegmatic hostage keeper, through Frank, who wants his ex-wife kidnapped, through Detective Doyle, who is on the lookout for a man, and through Anna, who is a large dog. Throw them all into the mix and the result is a high-octane novel that fairly coruscates with tension.”‘Coruscates’, eh? Now that right there is a seriously classy verb.