Launch: THE TORCHBEARERS by Bairbre Higgins

Publication: PURSUIT by John McAllister

John McAllister has previously published two police procedural mysteries in the ‘Barlow’ series, but PURSUIT (Glenlish Publishing) is a standalone thriller about a professional hitman. Quoth the blurb elves:

“A man, a van and a dog, you’d think they’d be easy found.”
  Professional hitman, Doc Terence, has been given an impossible contract. Half of the Organisation wants him to find and kill disgraced politician, Paul Bradley. But the other half, led by Doc’s brother, Jimmy, insist on interrogating the man first. Bradley proves elusive and, as frustrations build, the body count mounts.
  Then there’s the women in Doc’s life: his runaway wife, and a defiant Connie who conceals information about Bradley. Really, to protect his professional integrity, Doc should kill both women and he does try to. However, Doc has never yet hit a woman let alone murdered one.
  Unaware of the threat to his life Bradley takes a job in greyhound kennels, where he trains his dog for a big race. Everyone comes together the night of the Rosebowl final, and there are enemies out there that Doc doesn’t know about …

  PURSUIT is published on November 1st. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Launch: DEAD SECRET by Ava McCarthy

Ava McCarthy launches her latest thriller, DEAD SECRET (HarperCollins) next Wednesday, January 27th. To wit:

HarperCollins Publishers invites you to celebrate the launch of Ava McCarthy’s new thriller, DEAD SECRET, at Dubray Books, Blackrock Shopping Centre, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, on Wednesday 27th Jan 2016 from 6:30pm-8:30pm

  Quoth the blurb elves:

From the author of the Harry Martinez thrillers comes a gripping psychological suspense novel.
  Two quick shots. One for him. One for you.
  After the death of her three-year-old daughter, Jodie has nothing left to live for – or almost nothing.
  She has one task to fulfil before she takes her own life. And that’s to kill the man she holds responsible for her daughter’s death – her seemingly perfect husband, Ethan.
  But Ethan is hiding more than just his true nature. And as more horrifying secrets from his past emerge, Jodie’s strength will be pushed to the limit …

Review: IDENTICAL by Scott Turow

Scott Turow was once described by Time magazine as ‘the bard of the litigious age’, but most of Identical (Mantle), his 10th novel, takes place outside of the courtroom. Indeed, as the story opens in 2008, it’s almost 25 years since Cassian Gianis was tried and convicted – after pleading guilty – for the murder of his then girlfriend, Dita Kronon. Cassian’s imminent release from prison coincides with an election campaign being waged by his identical twin brother Paul, formerly a successful lawyer and now a politician, who is ahead in the polls as he runs for the position of mayor. Paul has reckoned without Hal Kronon, however, Dita’s billionaire brother, who is convinced that Paul had a part to play in Dita’s death and is determined that Paul should be brought to justice.
  As the names suggest, Identical takes place in the Greek-American community that has established a significant presence in Turow’s recurring fictional setting of Kindle County, although Turow has one eye on a much older Greek culture. Hal’s father is called Zeus, and Tim Brodie, the private investigator Hal employs, has a particular fondness for reading Greek mythology. It is Brodie who amplifies the motif of identical twins that lies at the heart of the novel, specifically referencing the myth of Castor and Pollux, a story that in part provides the inspiration for the tragedy that subsequently engulfs the characters.
  A quirky bunch of characters they are, too. Tim Brodie is an unconventional private eye, an 83-year-old retiree bordering on senility who is still in mourning over the recent loss of his wife. Evon Miller, reprised from the novel Personal Injuries (1999), is a gay ex-FBI agent struggling to extricate herself from an emotionally destructive relationship. Paul Gianis, meanwhile, is that most unlikely of creations, a former lawyer and aspiring politician whose idealism still outweighs his pragmatism, a man whose faltering bid for power in 2008 is obliquely cross-referenced with the gathering momentum of Barack Obama’s campaign for presidential election.
  All told, it’s an absorbing thriller that boasts its fair share of twists and turns as the characters become increasingly entangled in a legal cat’s cradle that is further complicated by updated DNA identification techniques that weren’t available to the investigating team 25 years previously. Rooted in Greek mythology, the novel is an ambitious attempt to blend ancient and modern storytelling forms, in the process reminding us that human nature has changed far less in the intervening three thousand years than might have been hoped, particularly when it comes to our more venal instincts.
  Surprisingly, however, Identical is most effective when Turow turns from the public and the political to the private and the personal. A variety of expressions of love and loss are explored in considerable depth here, often in very moving and unsettling ways. The result is a novel that is utterly fascinated by character, and especially with how love can twist us into creatures unrecognisable even to ourselves when we seek to defend and protect those we love at any cost. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.