The chandeliers at CAP Towers fairly jingled with delight this morning, after Eoin McNamee’s forthcoming ORCHID BLUE popped through the letterbox. Not only was I being treated to an advance-advance copy (the novel isn’t published until November), but I didn’t even know there was a McNamee novel forthcoming. Quoth the blurb elves: January 1961, and the beaten, stabbed and strangled body of a nineteen year old Pearl Gambol is discovered, after a dance the previous night at the Newry Orange Hall. Returning from London to investigate the case, Detective Eddie McCrink soon suspects that their may be people wielding influence over affairs, and that the accused, the enigmatic Robert McGladdery, may struggle to get a fair hearing. Presiding over the case is Lord Justice Curran, a man who nine years previously had found his own family in the news, following the murder of his nineteen year old daughter, Patricia. In a spectacular return to the territory of his acclaimed, Booker long-listed THE BLUE TANGO, Eoin McNamee’s new novel explores and dissects this notorious murder case which led to the final hanging on Northern Irish soil.McNamee has carved out a tasty little niche for himself writing fictions based on true crimes (THE BLUE TANGO, RESURRECTION MAN, 12:23), and ORCHID BLUE is at base camp as we speak, testing its crampons and donning an oxygen mask in preparation for its fast-track assault on Mount TBR. Wish it bon chance, people: this is one that simply won’t wait …
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