SOME IRISH TBR

Half a dozen Irish books from the collection, waiting for me to pull my finger out.....

Manning O'Brine, Declan Hughes, Ken Bruen, Neville Thompson, Hugo Hamilton and John Trolan


Spies, PIs, crims, drugs, psychopaths, cops and robbers - what's not to like?

Manning O'Brine - Mills (1969)

 "... With this novel, the pomp and circumstance of Superspy are exploded to reveal the reality of international espionage. Manning O'Brine allows agents to be what they are: people who just want to live and let live--even if they have to kill to do it."--Dust Jacket.

John Trolan - Any Other Time (2000)

1986, Dublin. 21 year-old heroin addict Davy Byrne has just been released from Mountjoy and is tired of the petty thieving and high-risk robberies that he has to pull off in order to feed his addiction. Davy drives himself, and his reluctant pal Mickey, head-first into the drug underworld of Dublin, as they attempt to establish their own turf and gang by buying large quantities of heroin and dealing it themselves.

Declan Hughes - The Colour of Blood (2007)

Still adjusting to being back on Irish soil, PI Ed Loy finds himself caught up in a deadly web of lies, betrayals and shrouded histories. Shane Howard, a respected dentist from the venerable Howard medical family of Dublin, asks Loy to search for his missing daughter. The only information available is a set of pictures portraying nineteen-year-old Emily in a series of very compromising positions.

Seems like a pretty easy case to Loy . . . until people start dying. The very same day that Loy meets Howard, Emily's mother and ex-boyfriend are brutally stabbed to death. But that's only the beginning.

Loy discovers that the Howard family is not all that it seems. For years their name has stood for progress and improvement within Dublin's medical community, but that is only what's on the surface. The true legacy of the Howards is one of scandalous secrets, the type that are best left unearthed. Against his better judgment, Loy is drawn into the very center of the Howards' sordid family history, and what he finds could ruin more than reputations.

In The Color of Blood, Declan Hughes once again brings the city of Dublin to life in all its gritty glory. The dark realities of the streets converge with the lethal secrets of the past in a sinister and graphic thriller that will have readers on edge right up to its shocking conclusion.

Ken Bruen - American Skin (2006)

Stephen Blake is a good man blown in bad directions. He and girlfriend Siobhan, best friend Tommy, IRA terrorist Stapleton, and a particularly American sort of psychopath named Dade, are all on a collision course somewhere on the road between the dive bars of New York, and the pitiless desert of the Southwest. American Skin is the long-awaited American novel by Ken Bruen, the hardboiled master of Irish Noir.

Neville Thompson - Mama's Boys (2006)

The new novel from bestselling author Neville Thompson brings us back to the not-so-nice side of the tracks. Mama's boys tells the story of two childhood friends, Dammo and Bebop, who dream of making a name for themselves amongst Dublin's criminal fraternity. they will steal, cheat, smuggle drugs, and even murder to build reputations as hard men...but despite their criminal ways they will always be Mama's Boys.

Hugo Hamilton - Headbanger (1997)

In a cinema verite style, Hugo Hamilton decimates cliches of cops and robbers with doses of smoldering Irish sectarianism and the realities of a seedy, postindustrial Dublin. "Coyne is a majestic creation.... If Flann O'Brien's lunatic Professor De Selby had genetically engineered a cross between the novels of Raymond Chandler and those of Patrick McCabe, this is what the progeny might well have looked like." — The Times (London)