“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, August 7, 2012

The Little Brother

Melissa Hill, over at the Irish Crime Writing Facebook page, tips us off to a rather juicy piece of industry rumour-become-fact, which is that John Banville (right), under his crime writing nom-de-plume Benjamin Black, is to publish a Phillip Marlowe novel next year. All the details are here, but it appears that Banville / Black will be writing a full-length Chandleresque tale, set in Bay City, and featuring Marlowe - a novel in the same vein as Robert B. Parker’s PERCHANCE TO DREAM and POODLE SPRINGS.
  Should be very, very interesting indeed, particularly as (a) Banville took a right good lamping for daring to dabble in the dark arts of crime writing when first he donned his fedora as Benjamin Black; (b) Chandler, these days, tends to be lauded more for his romantic stylings than his plots, which is often a charge levelled at Benjamin Black himself; and (c) John Banville’s older brother, Vincent, was the first to introduce the Chandleresque homage to Irish crime writing, back in the early to mid-1990s, with his John Blaine private eye novels.
  Crikey. Cat? Meet the pigeons …

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