Lawks, ’Tis A Successful Irish RISING

The Irish Times’ commitment to reviewing Irish crime fiction continues apace, with Peter Cunningham’s review of Brian McGilloway’s THE RISING featuring on yesterday’s op-ed pages. Cunningham picked some holes in the novel, but the gist runneth thusly:

Devlin is a good cop with a clear sense of justice, a sharp brain and a big fist. When his personal life and the crimes he is investigating begin to merge, as we know they will, our sympathy and respect for him, never in doubt, become acute. The climax of this well-paced story is left dangling enticingly.
  Having just slogged through the Stieg Larsson trilogy, mostly with enjoyment, it was nonetheless something of a relief to come upon a police thriller which is told in a bare yet skilful way and which does not lurch every hundred pages or so into political history.
  Garda investigation and forensics techniques are well researched and written, but not bludgeoned home.
  McGilloway has a healthy respect for his readers’ intelligence.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Incidentally, Peter Cunningham is himself a purveyor of quality thrillers, such as THE TAOISEACH and WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US, so he knows of what he speaks. His latest offering, CAPITAL SINS, is due in mid-June, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

Ireland, 2006. Financial hysteria grips the nation. No one can speak of anything but the price of property - it is impossible not to make money. Developers gorge on massive loans. Bankers, egged on by politicians, trample over each other in the stampede to lend more and more. Millionaires are created every day as the stock market soars and Ireland audaciously becomes one of the world’s wealthiest nations. But at the heart of this unholy multi-billion euro alliance between developers, politicians and bankers lies a hideous truth: the whole empire is built on sand. Two men face each other over the dark divide. One, Albert Barr, a developer, has everything to lose; the other, Lee Carew, a struggling journalist, suddenly realises that he has stumbled upon the story of a lifetime. And for the bankers, the developers and Ireland’s Celtic Tiger, time is rapidly running out. With devastating accuracy and savage humour, Peter Cunningham’s novel tells the story of the final year of the Celtic Tiger as it has never been told before.

  Nice. But will CAPITAL SINS measure up to Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND? Only time, that irrepressibly gossiping canary, will tell …