“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

Friday, September 17, 2010

The Digested Read: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay

Being the continuing stooooooory of a quack who has gone to the - no, hold on, that’s the Muppet Show. Herewith be the latest in an increasingly improbable line of Digested Reads, aka the Novel du Jour in 300 words. Roll it there, Collette …
“Hi, I’m darkly disturbed Dexter. Deeply, dizzily deranged, in fact.
  “My schtick is that I murder scumbags with alliteration overkill - but hey, you try living in Miami without cutting loose once in a while.
  “That’s a psychopath joke, by the way. ‘Cutting loose’. Because I’m not just a deliciously diseased destroyer of depraved desperadoes, I’m a hoot and a half too. Deliriously delightful.
  “Anyhoo, that’s all in the past now. Yep, no more migraine-inducing alliteration for moi. I’ve had a baby, y’see, and she’s lovely. Luminously, lushly, ludicrously lovely. I mean, those psycho kids my wife Rita had before we met want to play with her all the time.
  “Gosh, I feel almost human. Hey, maybe all that morbid mutilating malarkey is a teensy-weensy bit immoral, eh?
  “Woah, stall the ball! There’s cannibals loose in Miami! And if there’s one thing that’s going to stop an invasion of cannibals, it’s an alliterating psychopath like devotedly dedicated defender Dexter.
  “Get the knives, kids - it’s play-time.
  “Did I mention that I’m a blood spatter forensic scientist attached to the Miami Police Department, even though I can’t stand the sight of blood? Irony, that is. Pay attention at the back, or I’ll kill you.
  “No, I’m only kidding. A jocular jester of joking japestery, c’est moi.
  “By the way, did I mention that my psycho-freak brother has turned up, and that he’s even more disgustingly dedicated to deviously depopulating than I am?
  “Rita’s freaky kids seem to like him, though.
  “What’s that? The cannibals? Right, yes. They want to eat me, apparently.
  “Take that, cannibal-types! Boosh! Ka-blooey!!
  “Incidentally, has anyone here read that Hannibal Lecter book about the charming psychopath? No? Thank God for that.
  “Bam! Biff!!
  “Feeling peckish, cannibal-types? Well, here’s a side order of Dexter’s divinely dispensed disingenuous DESTRUCTION!
  “De End.”

  THE DIGESTED READ, IN A LINE: I scream, you scream, we all scream for Miami Vice cream.
  This article first appeared in the Evening Herald.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Good man. Enjoyed that! I watched the first episode of the latest series on FX the other day and had to turn it off. I'm getting squeamish in my old age. There was a scene where a really creepy John Lithgow was murdering a young girl in a bath. TOO much detail. Horrible.

Glenna said...

Ah perfect. I've always wondered about those books.

Sean Patrick Reardon said...

“My schtick is that I murder scumbags with alliteration overkill"

This is a great line and so true!

seana graham said...

I think you ought to get ahold of the publisher and tell them that in future, you'll be helping with the series titles. I'm sure Jeff Lindsay would appreciate it.

Unless he wouldn't.

Dorte H said...

Wonderful!

Another book I won´t have to buy (nor watch in the cinema) :D

Do you do Shakespeare too? Because then I´ll send my students this way so they can tick him off the curriculum in the painless way!