If your name was Jo Bannister, and you were a writer, and even if your life was as empty and futile as your humble host’s, wouldn’t you write an autobiography, to be published posthumously, just so you could call it STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN? No? Okay then … Anyhoos, a mystery man whose name we won’t reveal for fear of inducing narcolepsy in our already doddering readership gets in touch to suggest that we, being alleged Boswells of the Irish crime fic scene, get the proverbial finger out and use it to type some words that include the name ‘Jo Bannister’. For lo! T’would appear that the outrageously prolific Jo Bannister – albeit English-born – lives in Norn Iron and writes novels of the crime fic variety, the most recent being a series featuring the protags Deacon and Brodie. The current offering is CLOSER STILL, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:
Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon doesn’t take kindly to threats made on his family. So when local crime boss Joe Loomis starts to menace his infant son and the child’s mother, Brodie Farrell, Deacon is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect them. However, the danger of Loomis is not something he will have to worry about for long. Brodie has made a career out of finding lost things, but the last thing she’d want to look for is a man she’s taken great pains to lose. Annoyance is quickly replaced by horror when she finds Loomis at her door collapsed in a pool of blood - stabbed to the verge of death with his own knife. But it’s the gangster’s enigmatic last mutterings that threaten to tear apart her tenuously held family. With Deacon under suspicion and Brodie on the hunt for the crook’s killer, both are pulled into a world of twisting family ties and terrorism. Little do they know that the murder of one small time crime boss will unearth a sinister plot that could devastatingly impact far more than the pair’s domestic life.So there you have it. Jo Bannister, yet another Irish crime fic author. Better late than never, eh? And at least we’re on the ball for her forthcoming LIARS ALL. Ish.
What an interesting post. I have Jo Bannister's books from Echoes of Lies on up lying on my piano waiting for me to read. My wife read one of them and wanted to read them all in order, so we ordered them, mostly from used book stores, and she just finished the last one. I'll have to get rading.
ReplyDeleteIt is The Brodie Farrell Series that we have.
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