The Dead Yard being the second in
Adrian McKinty’s ‘Dead’ trilogy, in which Michael Forsythe – Bourne with an evil sense of humour – goes undercover to infiltrate an Irish paramilitary splinter group operating out of New England. A pounding pace, rugged prose and a palette of pop culture references put this one in the Pelecanos bracket, but it’s McKinty’s turn of phrase that marks him out as an original – even if, hailing as we do from the Yeats County, we could have done without the various references to the ‘cow fuckers from Sligo’. Fabulous stuff, and The Bloomsday Dead yet to come: our cup runneth over. Meanwhile, Half Moon Investigations by
Eoin Colfer details the adventures of Fletcher Moon, a 12-year-old PI investigating the disappearance of a lock of hair. The rules of underage fiction dictate
that there’s a refreshing absence of gore, violence and generalised psychosis, but on the basis of its seamless writing, sly humour and reading-as-pure-pleasure, this tucks effortlessly into Elmore Leonard’s slipstream. Colfer is obviously a fan of Chandler et al, and he has distilled essence of the hardboiled style here, with the emphasis very much on style. Writers will read it and weep; less self-conscious readers will be wearing a smile throughout.
The Dead Yard being the second in Adrian McKinty’s ‘Dead’ trilogy, in which Michael Forsythe – Bourne with an evil sense of humour – goes undercover to infiltrate an Irish paramilitary splinter group operating out of New England. A pounding pace, rugged prose and a palette of pop culture references put this one in the Pelecanos bracket, but it’s McKinty’s turn of phrase that marks him out as an original – even if, hailing as we do from the Yeats County, we could have done without the various references to the ‘cow fuckers from Sligo’. Fabulous stuff, and The Bloomsday Dead yet to come: our cup runneth over. Meanwhile, Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer details the adventures of Fletcher Moon, a 12-year-old PI investigating the disappearance of a lock of hair. The rules of underage fiction dictate 
that there’s a refreshing absence of gore, violence and generalised psychosis, but on the basis of its seamless writing, sly humour and reading-as-pure-pleasure, this tucks effortlessly into Elmore Leonard’s slipstream. Colfer is obviously a fan of Chandler et al, and he has distilled essence of the hardboiled style here, with the emphasis very much on style. Writers will read it and weep; less self-conscious readers will be wearing a smile throughout.
1 comment:
At last! Well, I'm glad you seemed to enjoy Half Moon. Nice book cover. Is that the Irish version, because mine isn't the same? I seem to remember Eoin saying his publishers wanted him to leave things out that would be too adult for his readers, but he wanted them to remain for us mature readers. Good thing. And you can't start hardboiling them too early.
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