Monday 1 December 2008

John The Maun


It looks as if John Connolly is reading more Northern Irish crime fiction than I am at the minute. Just yesterday, Declan Burke counter-scooped my scoop with news that John Connolly had expanded on an already stellar blurb for Stuart Neville's debut, The Twelve (or The Ghost's of Belfast in the US). John Connolly thinks that it is, "...the best mystery to have emerged so far from the aftermath of the Troubles." Heady stuff for our always modest Mister Neville, I'd say.

Not only this, but Mister Connolly had only nice things to say upon reading Brian McGilloway's soon to be released, Bleed a River Deep:

Inspector Ben Devlin is that rare creature: a detective who is not violent or tortured, but who is intensely, movingly human, and it is his humanity and decency that grip the reader and give these novels a searing honesty. The Devlin books are set to become one of the great series in modern crime fiction.’

John Connolly (Best selling author of The Reapers.)


Great stuff! Crime fiction from Northern Ireland just keeps going from strength to strength. I fear I'm not going to be able to keep up with it soon. I'll always try to, though. You should too.

3 comments:

John McFetridge said...

Not only is Inspector Devlin that rare creature, as John Connolly so rightly points out, he arrived fully fomed in the first book.

How rare is that?

John McFetridge said...

"fully fomed," ha, that's funny. When will we be able to edit these comments, damned Blogger...

"fully formed," of course.

Gerard Brennan said...

John - Yeah, the lack of an edit feature on these comments bugs teh sgit out of me too. Sometimes yoiu're in too much of a hurry to keep it tidy.

Fully fomed or formed, Devlin is a great character from the outset. But his development in Gallows Lane? Wow!

gb