“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, June 3, 2015

Interview: Douglas Kennedy, author of THE HEAT OF BETRAYAL

I had an interview with Douglas Kennedy (right) published in the Irish Examiner last week, on the publication of his latest novel, THE HEAT OF BETRAYAL (Hutchinson). In the novel, married couple Robin and Paul travel to Morocco for a working holiday, only for Robin to discover a particularly cruel ‘intimate betrayal’ by Paul:
What follows is a thrilling tale as Robin sets off alone in a strange land to find her husband. The opening, which moves from Casablanca to Essaouira, is reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, but Douglas also had more literary inspirations to draw upon.
  “There were two novels that were in my mind, or two writers I should say. The first was Paul Bowles, with The Sheltering Sky, which is an extraordinary book. But I was also thinking about Patricia Highsmith, and Highsmith was always very interesting on Americans abroad, especially a couple in trouble, with secrets. I also had in mind [VS] Naipaul, who in one of his books talked about a certain kind of Leftist from the West, who would always turn up in centres of revolution with return air-tickets,” he laughs.
  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here

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