“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

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

I Choo-Choo-Choose Arlene Hunt

Yesterday I do be mentioning Arlene Hunt in dispatches from last weekend’s trip to New York, so I do (sorry, but we were in an Irish bar on Friday night, and it takes time for the pixie dust to wear off), and it’s fair to say that one of the highlights of the weekend was seeing Arlene’s latest tome, THE CHOSEN, in the flesh for the first time. A very handsome tome it is too, and nice to see a crime novel that opts for a white cover rather than the usual grim tones that tend to dominate designers’ palettes. It’s all the more impressive, methinks, when you consider that THE CHOSEN is Arlene’s first outing under her own aegis, as it were: after six well-received titles published with a traditional house, Arlene has taken publishing matters into her own hands, setting up Portnoy Publishing with her husband. I wish them a fair wind and calm seas as they set sail into the future …
  As for the novel itself, Mike Nicol over at the very fine Crime Beat blog is currently publishing extracts from a number of contemporary Irish crime novels, and Arlene’s contribution from THE CHOSEN can be found here. “A taut, sharp, gripping re-imagining of the serial-killer novel,” says Tana French, which is all kinds of nice.
  Elsewhere, Crime Beat also features extracts from Alan Glynn’s latest, BLOODLAND; a snippet from Colin Bateman’s forthcoming tome NINE INCHES that begins - oh yes! - with, “It was a dark and stormy night …”; and my own humble tome, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which is currently sulking in a corner and wishing it had been written by Colin Bateman. Ungrateful buggers, my books …

1 comment:

Gerard Brennan said...

Love the title of this post. Soooo Ralph Wiggum.

gb