Friday, May 10, 2013

The Naked And The Stiffed

I do like the set-up to Rob Kitchen’s STIFFED (Snubnose Press), which sounds like the kind of crackerjack black comedy Eoin Colfer is bringing to the masses. To wit:
Tadhg Maguire wakes to find himself spooning a dead man. The stiff is Tony Marino, lieutenant to mobster Aldo Pirelli. It doesn’t matter how the local enforcer ended up between Tadhg’s sheets, Pirelli is liable to leap to the wrong conclusion and demand rough justice.
  The right thing to do would be to call the cops.
  The sensible thing to do would be to disappear. Forever.
  The only other option is to get rid of the body and pretend it was never there. No body, no crime.
  What he needs is a couple of friends to help dispose of the heavy corpse. Little do Tadhg’s friends know what kind of reward they’ll receive for their selfless act – threatened, chased, shot at, and kidnapped with demands to return a million dollars they don’t possess.
  By mid-afternoon Tadhg is the most wanted man in America. Not bad for someone who’d never previously had so much as parking ticket.
  If he survives the day he’s resigned to serving time, but not before he saves his friends from the same fate.
  For all the details, clickety-click here …

No comments:

Post a Comment

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.