What - And Who - Miss Katie Did Next

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on all the Irish crime fiction out there, up pops another serious contender for consideration. For lo! It’s Jack Barry and his MISS KATIE REGRETS from 2006! Quoth the blurb elves:

A seemingly humdrum shooting of an ex-paramilitary anti-drugs campaigner leads Detective Thomas Barrett to an on-line male prostitution service and to hints of a link with a politician appearing at a tribunal into corrupt property speculation. Barrett is given “sick leave” as newforces within the British and Irish centres of power allow him to pursue the sensitive investigation offstage. The plot moves between Dublin and Amsterdam, Manchester and British suburbia. At the centre of an apparent spider’s web of intrigue sits the enigmatic figure of Miss Katie, a crabby Dublin transvestite who will, under pressure, kiss and tell. And, perhaps, kill. The dramatic denouement takes place in the German cemetery in the Dublin mountains. Barrett is free to have another crack at his failed marriage, and Miss Katie, finally, is defanged, if not deflowered.

Defanged? Hmmm, colour us intrigued. So who be this Jack Barry chappy, eh? Quoth the Brandon Books blurbarazzi:

Jack Barry (also known as John Maher) is a winner of the Francis McManus Award, the P.J. O’Connor Radio Play Award, the Lar Cassidy Memorial Award, a Marianne Palotti Fellowship, an Arts Council Writer’s Bursary, and other awards and fellowships. Born in Dublin in 1954, he lives in Dublin, working as a writer and researcher; he has three children.

So there you have it. Jack Barry. MISS KATIE REGRETS. No way are we featuring the book on the basis of its salacious cover. No way.