Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Green, Green Grass Of Home

Mick Clifford’s GHOST TOWN was one of the finest of the many Irish crime fiction debuts in 2012, and I’m delighted to see it get a snazzy new cover (right) and - presumably - a massive reprint in the wake of all the excellent reviews it garnered.
  Better yet, it looks like Mick Clifford hasn’t allowed the (koff) grass to grow under his feet. There’s a new title due from him later this year, when Headline publish THE DEAL in May. Quoth the blurb elves:
Karen Riney is at a loose end in Dublin, trying to get a job and straighten things out with crime boss Pascal Nix for her jailed ex-boyfriend, when she hits on a great idea to make money. In the depths of recession, there’s no business like the growhouse business. Kevin Wyman, drowning in a sea of debt, also wants to straighten things out with Nix, but his troubles begin to mount when despair sends him off into the world of online affairs. Dara Burns is a hitman for hire who ends up working for Nix, but his past is catching up with him as somebody is intent on making him pay for his crimes. Three diverse characters are thrown together by fate and set upon a trail of greed, destruction and revenge where the best that can be hoped for is just to stay alive.
  A journalist by trade, Mick Clifford appears to have his zeitgeisty finger firmly on the nation’s pulse - only yesterday a growhouse was discovered in Carlow with half a mill’s worth of weed at home. Yup, Carlow. Or Carhigh, as precisely no one will be calling it from here on in …

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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.