Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE DARK PLACE By Sam Millar

Garbhan Downey gets in touch, not to promote his current tome, THE WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES, as you might expect, but to ask if I’d be interested in running a review of fellow Norn Ironer Sam Millar’s THE DARK PLACE. The answer is yes, and thank you kindly, sir, and the review runneth thusly:

THE DARK PLACE by Sam Millar (Brandon Press)

Little children look away now.
  There’s a tagline running across the back of Belfast writer Sam Millar’s new crime novel, THE DARK PLACE, which I really hope isn’t true. It reads: “While most writers sit in their study and make it up, Sam Millar has lived it ...” For no-one, but no-one, deserves the type of punishment Sam metes out to his detective hero Karl Kane in this darkest of tales.
  Kane is beaten to near-death twice, force-fed narcotics, raped by a crazed (and possibly venereal) vamp, cuckolded by at least one partner, and then blown up in an underground tunnel.
  The people around him don’t fare much better either – his daughter is kidnapped by a particularly monstrous serial killer, his father develops late-onset Alzheimer’s and his best friend gets his throat slit helping our man track down the villain ...
  But for all the gore, Millar is a riveting story-teller, leading the reader from crisis to catastrophe at a frenetic pace. And he skilfully punctures the darkness with moments of sharp humour too, getting great mileage out of Kane’s bawdy relationship with his new girlfriend. Indeed, the sarcastically suggestive pre-coital interchanges between Kane and Naomi are as highly charged as anything Chandler or Hammett ever scripted.
  Like Marlowe, Kane has a touch of the white knight about him, and his idealism – and refusal to do the wrong thing – saves the book from its occasional lurches into horror-schlock. Indeed, if the book has a failing, it is that Millar has an inclination to lay it on too thick.
  But then, what do I know? I sit in the study and make it up. Sam, I suspect, while he mightn’t have lived all of it, certainly has spent a lot more time in dark places than me.
  If ever a novel were aptly named. - Garbhan Downey

More Kicks Than Pricks

A good satirist is a thorn in the side of the status quo, although there’s as many kicks as there are pricks in Garbhan Downey’s latest offering, THE WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES, if Gerard Brennan’s hot-off-the-presses review is to believed. To wit:

“Downey employs a light-hearted and uncomplicated voice in the telling of this tale. Considering the intricacies of the plot, that’s probably a blessing. But what I found most intriguing is how he goes against a lot of the modern advice on writing crime fiction. He head-hops like a madman, sharing multiple character perspectives within paragraphs, and he has nothing against dialogue tagging or adverbs. These are the kind of things that would normally pull me out of the story and make me reach for my editing hat. But when Garbhan Downey does it, it’s okay. He’s that good.” – Gerard Brennan, CSNI

  For the rest of the review, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, THE WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES gets the power-point book trailer treatment over at Author Stream. The Big Question: What’s the skinny on whether book trailers are worth the effort? Anyone out there with compelling proof that they add to sales? I’m all ears ...