“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

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Collusionist

That cradle and lair of all things Irish crime fiction, Belfast’s No Alibis, hosts the official launch of Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION tomorrow, July 30th, with the details running thusly:
No Alibis Bookstore is pleased to invite you to the launch party for Stuart Neville’s second novel, COLLUSION, on Friday 30th July at 6:30PM.
  Stuart Neville has been a musician, a composer, a teacher, a salesman, a film extra, a baker and a hand double for a well known Irish comedian, but is currently a partner in a successful multimedia design business in the wilds of Northern Ireland. COLLUSION is his second novel, the follow-up to the hugely successful and award winning THE TWELVE.
  In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) came complete with a blurb from none other than James Ellroy (“THE TWELVE will knock you sideways. This guy can write.”) and scooped the LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller of the Year a couple of months back. Not bad for a debut, but THE TWELVE has also been nominated for a Best First Novel gong in each of the Anthony, Barry and Macavity awards, to be announced at this year’s Bouchercon.
  I mentioned a couple of weeks back that COLLUSION is a finer novel than THE TWELVE, not least because it’s rather more cynical than its predecessor about joining the dots between ‘the Troubles’ and post-conflict Northern Ireland. Here’s another snippet:
Did anyone live here now? He searched for signs of someone, anyone, making a life on this street. Not a soul. Less than a mile away, millions were being pumped into brownfield sites, building apartments, shopping centres, technology parks. Just across the river, property was changing hands for prices never imagined just a few years before. One-bedroom flats sold for a quarter of a million, snapped up by investors looking to make a killing out of Belfast’s peace boom, desperate to get rich before the bubble burst, as it surely would. And here, not ten minutes away, stood two rows of empty houses with generations of memories rotting away along with the mortar and woodwork, all because small-minded thugs couldn’t see beyond the world of Them and Us.
  In my humble opinion, COLLUSION is a very fine novel indeed. A good old-fashioned page-turner of a thriller, it should be required reading for those Ivory Tower types who bemoan the paucity of novels addressing social and political flux of contemporary Ireland, and the lack of post-ceasefire literature concerning itself with Northern Ireland.

11 comments:

Sean Patrick Reardon said...

A fine endorsement for a novel I have been eagerly waiting to read.

seana graham said...

I can't believe I graciously let someone else take the galley of this to read, just because she was 'excited' about it. And she hasn't even read Ghosts of Belfast yet!

Dana King said...

I can't believe this is out already, and I've only just got GHOSTS OF BELFAST up to Number 2 on my TBR pile.

This day job is really cutting into my reading time.

Declan Burke said...

Much obliged, Sean. I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed ...

Seana - there really is such a thing as being too generous. Or so I'm told, never having experienced the instinct personally.

Dana - this way, you could read both back-to-back. Could be an interesting experience ...

Cheers, Dec

TF.80 said...

I'm really looking forward to reading this.
Met Stuart at an book festival recently and he seemed like a pretty cool guy, so I bought his book 'The Twelve' and it didn't disappoint.

seana graham said...

Basically, I'm not generous, but I like luring other staff members into reading Irish crime fiction, so I made an exception.

Won't happen again.

Unknown said...

aw fewgawdzache, dec, put the family in the car and c'mon up to rainy befalt for the event this evening. i'll buy yiz an ice cream.

Naomi Johnson said...

I'm so behind the times. I've only just started Ghosts of Belfast.

seana graham said...

Collusion isn't even out here yet, Naomi, so not really.

Declan Burke said...

Was anyone at the COLLUSION launch on Friday night? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller...?

Stuart Neville said...

"Was anyone at the COLLUSION launch on Friday night? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller...?"

I was! It was a good night, with a great turnout. Signed lots of books and met lots of people. As always, David Torrans put on a great event.