Review: STUMPED by Rob Kitchin

The latest Irish Times crime fiction column includes a review of Rob Kitchin’s STUMPED, which ran a lot like this:

Billed as a ‘screwball noir’ and set during the concluding days of an Irish election campaign, Rob Kitchin’s Stumped (280 Steps, €11.99) is a comic crime caper that opens with Grant, an English academic based at Maynooth University, being presented with an ultimatum: return an unspecified package stolen from a Dublin gang lord, or see his friend Sinead returned to him in severed pieces. Enlisting the help of the wheelchair-bound Mary and her camp friend Declan, the hapless, bumbling Grant sets out to do the right thing, aided and abetted by venial politicians, low-life thugs, tabloid journalists, a rockabilly cop and a veritable platoon of drag queen farmers. Kitchin – an English academic based at Maynooth University – offers a delightfully preposterous tale in this, his fourth novel, even if the story is neither bleak enough to qualify as true noir and lacks the snappy, crackling dialogue we associate with classic screwball comedy. That said, Kitchin maintains a cracking pace and generates plenty of humour by switching rapidly between the perspectives of a swarming host of outlandish characters, very few of whom are anywhere near as clever or competent as they believe themselves to be. ~ Declan Burke

  For the rest of the column, which includes the current offerings from Paula Hawkins, Harri Nykänen and Celeste Ng, clickety-click here …

Publication: STUMPED by Rob Kitchin

STUMPED (280 Steps) is the latest offering from Rob Kitchin, a screwball noir set in Ireland during the run-up to an election. Quoth the blurb elves:

It is election time in Ireland and a lot more is about to change for Grant, a new arrival from England, and his wheelchair-bound friend Mary, than their political representatives.
  Their friend, Sinead, has been kidnapped, and her brother, Pat, has disappeared. Charged with tracking them down, Grant and Mary are soon caught between a vicious Dublin gangster seeking the return of a valuable package and an ambitious politician determined to protect a secret that might harm his re-election prospects. To make matters worse, when someone they confront is found floating face down in the River Liffey, Inspector McGerrity Black, Dublin’s finest rockabilly cop, is soon hot on their trail.
  With election day looming and Sinead’s fingers turning up on a regular basis they race through County Kildare suburbia, Dublin’s saunas, Manchester’s gay village and rural Mayo, crossing paths with drag queen farmers, corrupt property developers, and sadistic criminal gang members, as they desperately seek a way to save themselves and their friends while all the time staying ahead of the law.

  The exit polls, as it were, augur well. To wit:

“Rob Kitchin joins the ranks of top-notch Irish crime writers: Hughes, Glynn, Bruen, French, and Burke. Intricate, terrifying, and thrillingly propulsive, STUMPED offers readers a vivid portrait of Irish politicians, the media, and the police as they clash with the incomparably villainous Doherty.” – Patti Abbott

  For much more in that vein, clickety-click here …