DEAD Man Tells New Tales

That blummin’ Declan Hughes (right), eh? Can’t sit still. No sooner is the ink dry on the latest in the Ed Loy series, THE DYING BREED, than the Irish Ross Macdonald is wibbling on about the fourth instalment, CITY OF THE DEAD, to Dana King over at New Mystery Reader, with the gist running thusly:

“CITY OF THE DEAD sees Loy take the case of a woman whose father was murdered fifteen years ago; her mother’s lover was convicted of the crime, but the conviction was found to be unsafe, and he was released. The dead man was a tax inspector, and at the time of his death, was preparing tax evasion investigations into three men: a major gangland figure, an IRA terrorist and a prominent businessman. The Guards refuse to re-open the case, insisting, despite the verdict of the appeal court, that the right man was found guilty. Now the IRA are on ceasefire, and the businessman is a friend to politicians, and the gangland figure has paid his debts and gone legit, Loy finds the investigation extremely complicated, and begins to suspect it is in no-one’s interest except the dead man’s family to uncover the truth.”

Aye, but will there be blood? Trundle on over to New Mystery Reader for the inside skinny as to why ‘Declan Hughes, John Connolly, Adrian McKinty, Declan Burke (koff), Ken Bruen and others’ are heralding ‘a golden age’ in Irish crime fiction …