Launch: LAST KISS by Louise Phillips

Review: THE ELOQUENCE OF THE DEAD by Conor Brady

Conor Brady made his debut as a historical crime novelist with A June of Ordinary Murders (2011), and that novel’s hero, Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow of the Dublin Metropolitan Police ‘G-Men’ Division, makes a welcome return in THE ELOQUENCE OF THE DEAD (New Island). The novel opens in Galway in 1887, with Lady Gessel bidding a none-too-fond farewell to her estate as she prepares to sell her family’s ancestral home, as so many of her peers are doing, and move to England. Meanwhile, back in Dublin, Swallow is called in to investigate the murder of a pawnbroker in the Liberties area, a man who appears to have paid a very harsh price for handling stolen goods. How these events are connected gradually emerges in a propulsive but stylish tale of conspiracy and corruption on a grand scale. Swallow, a keen amateur painter, brings a sharp eye to bear on his surroundings, which in turn allows Brady to give us a vivid account of late Victorian Dublin in all its squalid glory. The result is a very satisfying police procedural / mystery and an equally fine historical novel. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times, in a column that also included reviews of the latest titles from Jo Nesbo, Sophie Loubiere, Conor Fitzgerald and John Lawton.

Stranger Danger

Michael Russell follows up last year’s debut THE CITY OF SHADOWS with another title featuring Garda Sergeant Stefan Gillespie, THE CITY OF STRANGERS (Avon) – and a very handsome cover it is, too. Quoth the blurb elves:

“The past didn’t only come up at you out of the ground in Ireland; it walked around the streets following you, and if you turned round to complain it spat in your face.”
  New York, 1939: A city of hope. A city of opportunity. A city hiding dark secrets …
  A brutal murder in an affluent suburb of Dublin and the unexplained death of an Irish diplomat in Manhattan … Garda Sergeant Stefan Gillespie is sent to America to bring a killer to justice, but his mission soon becomes part of an increasingly personal struggle.
  A chance encounter with an old friend draws him deep into a network of conspiracy, espionage and terror with disturbing connections to home. When he suddenly becomes part of an Irish woman’s bid for freedom from the clutches of a corrupt Manhattan power-broker, Stefan discovers that the war that is looming in Europe is already being played out on the streets of New York, with deadly consequences.
  In a time when people must make a stand for what they believe in, willingly or not, the stakes for Stefan Gillespie, and everything he holds dear, couldn’t be higher.

  Michael will be appearing at ‘Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival’ in Trinity College at the end of November. Meanwhile, for more on Michael and his novels, clickety-click here …

And Into The Riverbank We Dived

I was in the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge yesterday, where I hosted a conversation between Brian McGilloway and Declan Hughes for the Kildare Readers Festival, which was – no, really – a lot more lively than the picture suggests. Brian read an excerpt from HURT, which will be published later this month, a follow-up to the Lucy Black novel LITTLE GIRL LOST (which has sold in excess of a very impressive 300,000 e-book copies). Declan, meanwhile, read an intriguing taster from his forthcoming novel, ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, which will be published next February. A departure from his Ed Loy series of private eye novels, it’s a domestic suspense novel set in the US.

  All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable event. The Kildare Readers Festival is always meticulously organised, hosted in a beautiful setting at the Riverbank, and the hospitality is superb. I bumped into Louise Phillips, who had been speaking at an earlier event, and also Niamh Boyce, who told me that she’d taken part in a writer’s workshop in Castlecomer in Kilkenny many moons ago, co-hosted by myself and Garbhan Downey. I was relieved, to be honest, to learn that I hadn’t put her off writing entirely; indeed, Niamh was holding a copy of THE HERBALIST, her debut novel, which was published earlier this year to a veritable chorus of critical acclaim. Happy days.
  That’s it for public appearances in October, but November is shaping up to be a busy month. Brian McGilloway curates ‘Killer Books’ in Derry on the first weekend of the month, and ‘Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival’ takes place at Trinity College on November 22nd / 23rd. I’ll also be hosting a public interview with Scott Turow at Smock Alley on November 11th, which should be a real treat. If you can make it along to any of those, I’d love to see you there …

Daly Update

Anthony Quinn’s debut DISAPPEARED, which featured Police Inspector Celcius Daly, was called “a landmark in the fiction of Northern Ireland” by Ken Bruen. Nominated for the Strand Award for Best Debut Novel, it was named one of Kirkus’ Best Crime Novels of 2012.
  Anthony’s follow-up to DISAPPEARED is BORDER ANGELS (Mysterious Press). To wit:

On a cold winter night, a young woman gets into her pimp’s car from the farmhouse brothel where she lives and works. For the women brought here from Eastern Europe, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic might as well be a war zone. Put to work in the brothels, the women are forced into a living hell.
  She is just planning her escape when the car explodes. The next morning, there is nothing left but the pimp’s charred body and mysterious footprints leading into the snow. As the forensic specialists turn their attention to the burned corpse, Police Inspector Celcius Daly obsesses over the footprints. Where exactly did the woman come from, and where did she go? It is the sort of question asked only in the borderland—between North and South, between life and death.

  For more, clickety-click here …