“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

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Justice, Where Is Thy Sting? Oh, There It Is …

Lazy bugger that I am, I’m about four months late in telling you that the third in Cora Harrison’s ‘Burren Mysteries’ series is THE STING OF JUSTICE, which, as always, is set in mediaeval Ireland and features her Brehon judge Mara. Quoth the blurb elves:
The autumn has come to the Burren, it’s a time of harvest: of gathering for the winter to come. The end of summer for most and the end of life for others. When Mara attends the funeral of a local priest of the Burren, the last things she expects is another corpse to be found on the church steps - a man stung to death by bees. Sorley the silversmith was a greedy and distrusted man: there would be no shortage of people who wanted him dead but who really stood to profit from his murder? As Mara investigates, she must use all her cunning and prowess as a lady judge to bring the sting of justice to a killer with hatred in their hearts and murder on their mind.
  Meanwhile, and by contrast with your indolent host, Cora Harrison has been busy-busy-busy. Not only has she written another two novels in the Burren Mysteries series, she has also written the YA novel I WAS JANE AUSTEN’S BEST FRIEND and the first in a Victorian crime series for children called ‘The London Murder Mysteries’, both of which are due in March 2010 along with the fifth in the Burren Mysteries series. Crikey. James Patterson, eat your black heart out …

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