Can We Fit Just One More E Into PEELER?

It’s going to be a lot tougher to keep up with Irish crime fiction now that writers are bypassing the traditional structures and going directly to the e-market - see Alexander O’Hara here, and Ruby Barnes here. And that’s on top of the writers who are conventionally published but are also availing of the e-option, such as Kevin McCarthy, whose debut novel PEELER is now available in electronic form.
  Here’s a quick review of PEELER I contributed to January Magazine’s end-of-year round-up of the best books of 2010. To wit:

PEELER by Kevin McCarthy

Eoin McNamee, Benjamin Black and Cora Harrison are among those who write historical Irish crime fiction, and Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER (Mercier Press) deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. Set in Cork in 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, the novel has for its main protagonist Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe, a man who is not only a policeman with the hated Royal Irish Constabulary, but also a veteran of the Great War. McCarthy has made things doubly difficult for himself by choosing such a man for his hero, as Ireland’s relationship remains conflicted even today with the men who served in the RIC and fought for Britain during WWI. It’s a testament to his skill as a storyteller, then, that the complex O’Keefe - who considers himself as Irish as the next man, and is considered suspect by his superiors for that very reason - is such a sympathetic character as, aided and abetted by the despised Black-and-Tans, he pursues a killer who is also wanted by the IRA. McCarthy’s historical detail is excellent as he weaves a backdrop of black ops and blacker propaganda, with O’Keefe often a lone voice of reason and law-and-order while about him move squads of killers, both rebel and state-sanctioned. The pace and tension are expertly handled in what is a traditional page-turner of a thriller, yet McCarthy invests the novel with occasional poetic flourishes that highlight the bleak environment in which O’Keefe operates. All told, it’s a remarkably assured debut. - Declan Burke

  Don’t take my word for it, though - check out the rather impressive array of readers’ reviews PEELER has already generated at Amazon US, and here at Amazon UK …

We Need Kevin To Talk About Kevin

If you’re in Dublin tomorrow, May 26th, you could a lot worse than toddle along to the launch of Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER, which takes place at the Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar with festivities kicking off at 6.30pm. For what it’s worth, I’ve read the novel, and I think it’s a terrific debut. Meanwhile, the blurb elves have been wittering thusly:

West Cork. November 1920. The Irish War of Independence rages. The body of a young woman is found brutally murdered on a windswept hillside. A scrap board sign covering her mutilated body reads ‘TRATOR’. Traitor. Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), a wounded veteran of the Great War, is assigned to investigate the crime, aided by sinister detectives sent from Dublin Castle to ensure he finds the killer, just so long as the killer he finds best serves the purposes of the Crown in Ireland. The IRA has instigated its own investigation into the young woman’s death, assigning young Volunteer Liam Farrell - failed gunman and former law student - to the task of finding a killer it cannot allow to be one of its own. Unknown to each other, an RIC constable and an IRA Volunteer relentlessly pursue the truth behind the savage killing, their investigations taking them from the bullet-pocked lanes and thriving brothels of war-torn Cork city to the rugged, deadly hills of West Cork.

  Hats off, by the way, to Kevin McCarthy for doing it the hard way. In Ireland, attempting to create a sympathetic character from an RIC Sergeant - who works alongside Black-and-Tans - is a hard sell, even today. But then, Sean O’Keefe is a complex character. A police officer upholding law and order on behalf of the Crown, he’s nonetheless a proud Irishman and Catholic - and that’s before you get into the ramifications of a story in which the Crown and the IRA are after the same killer. It’s a volatile mix, and Kevin McCarthy does it full justice. I’m already looking forward to seeing his next offering …