The Thick Plottens: Yep, 'Tis The Mid-Week Interweb Mash-Up Baloohaha Thingy

Good vibes from the Seattle Times, people - "The book's plot and pacing are rock-solid, but its tender characterizations — particularly the deepening relationship between Ryan and his brainy, tough female partner — are what set it apart," says Adam Woog of Tana French's In The Woods, while Declan Hughes' The Color of Blood "is a classic hard-boiled detective story, adding an Irish twist to the archetypal Chandler/ Macdonald style." Mmmm, lovely. Hughes also gets a big-up from Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times in a review we missed from last month, to wit: "The overheated theatrics are a proper fit for his tough-guy hero, whose stern moral code and haunted personal history lend credibility to Hughes’s recurring theme of 'the sins of the fathers." Peachy. Adrian McKinty's The Bloomsday Dead gets a mention too - "Bullets fly and Joycean literary references ricochet everywhere as Forsythe tries to get his bearings in a Belfast so politically stable and yet so redolent of the evil in its violent past that he can’t wait to get out of town" - as does Ken Bruen for Priest: "You can’t expect much in the way of conventional sleuthing from this tormented hero, but there’s music in his lament for the corruption of innocence and the loss of faith." Gorgeous. And while we're on the topic of Bruen, here's an interview in Village you might have missed from last year, in which he goes all wibbly-wobbly-wonder about the prospects for Irish crime fiction: "I think if the world survives another five or 10 years, crime fiction will be huge here in Ireland. It'll be the new chick lit, God forgive me." The boy Bruen in day-glo pink covers? Mmmmmkay ...