“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Review: THE DROWNING CHILD by Alex Barclay

Alex Barclay’s series heroine, FBI Special Agent Ren Bryce, generally operates out of Denver, but The Drowning Child (Harper) finds Ren relocated to the Oregon town of Tate, where 12-year-old Caleb Veir has gone missing. What begins as a standard investigation for the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team becomes increasingly sinister, however, as Ren discovers that a number of children have died in mysterious circumstances in Tate, most of them by way of drowning. Complicating matters is Ren’s messy personal life, particularly the overwhelming guilt she feels for causing the deaths of her friends and colleagues in the ‘monumental horror’ of her previous case, Killing Ways (2015). Ren Bryce becomes a more compelling character with each successive novel (this is her sixth outing), hardboiled and professional on the outside but – courtesy of Ren’s unfiltered internal monologue – crippled with self-doubt and loathing on the inside. She’s also irreverent, insolent and endearingly self-deprecating, such as when she compares herself to the iconic Clarice Starling: “No screaming lambs, but lots of fucking voices.” Central to the appeal of The Drowning Child, however, is Barclay’s depiction of small-town America, a sharply observed valley of squinting windows that turns a blind eye to the perverse sickness at its very heart. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times in the crime fiction review column. Other titles reviewed are the new books from Carl Hiaasen, Sophie Hannah, Peter Spiegelman and Thomas Rydahl.

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