Brouhaha

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It won’t win the Nobel or the Booker, but it ought to have a fair run at the Bollinger Wodehouse prize. Decades on and I still have to remind myself that publishing is a business and the business of business is money; not aesthetics, or enlightenment or the avant-garde. The quotations and references - Springsteen to Yeats - add a lovely depth to this fine piece of work. Then there is a former garda officer, Kevin, a grandfather, the victim of a non-fatal shooting and a man obsessed with what happened to Sandra as well.

At its heart, this is a darned good murder mystery and I loved the way the trio of investigators go about tracking down the clues in their own special ways.The trio of an unhappily retired Gardai, an unpopular journalist, and a not so prodigal friend, make a fun group of flawed characters on the hunt for answers. Sandra disappeared and no body was ever found so there is a question over whether she is alive or dead.

But Dove has left a graphic novel – derivative it seems of Pat Mills Sláine – that with all its casual misogyny might have secret clues as to the crime. I’ve been a fan of Ardal’s , since his days in father Ted and his other roles in the BBC Comedy My Hero and the drama Death in Paradise. Now no longer in the force, he continues to go over what he knows (often reciting facts and possibilities to his infant grandson, Paul), still wanting to work it out. Each of the characters gradually reveals their complexities and – no pun intended – their troubles, as they tiptoe around a post Good Friday Agreement small town. Showing a shocking assertiveness for possibly the first time in his life, and the last, says you, Dove blew the lid off the whole town.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. But many people do not know the backdrop to Mike Herron's wonderful cannon of Slow Horses, and still manage to inveigle their way into that mysterious world and find the gold therein. He played Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted (1995–1998), George Sunday/Thermoman in My Hero (2000–2006), and DI Jack Mooney in Death in Paradise (2017–2020). The storyline moves between the events around the unsolved disappearance of teenager Sandra Mohan in 1994, and the impact of Sharkey, Kevin and Joanne's efforts to finally get to the truth following Dove's death - when all Tullyanna's dirty little secrets come spilling out. Our third main protagonist is Kevin, a retired Garda whose life has been haunted by a young girl's disappearance.

I have been a fan of Ardal O’Hanlon since watching him as a kid in Father Ted, Death on paradise etc. The sentence construction seemed odd at times, mainly because he has the habit of letting his brain wander off. e. that the Cause is greater than the Organization and the Organization is greater than the Leadership… the original Cause was more or less forgotten in the mists of time”.As a murder mystery the book has no problem with providing suspects, but I felt that the book ran out of steam midway through.

Sharkey is not really sure why he is here, but a strange message he recently received from the broken and drug-addicted Dove about Sandra gives him the feeling that the time has come to confront what really happened to her. I didn't always get all of the jokes as I'm not Irish, but really enjoyed the whodunit element of it. But these musings help build the story and are often where the dark humour comes from, adding depth to the characters. The wonderful town that is Tullyanna, fictional but I would imagine to have been made up of maybe one or two real places.of cruelty ("sorry for your trouble, Ma'am") and a smart journalist and an emasculated policeman discarded in the village ditch as the riviting plot unfolds in a series of chapters that are as taut as Pulp Fiction. Needed 100 more pages to wrap up the ending without feeling like it was just a chase to stay under a word count. The solution to Sandra’s disappearance too is rather dark and disturbing, and left me feeling unsettled.