Brouhaha

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I was therefore over the moon when I started reading and I could actually hear him talking to me in his Irish tang, nuanced language and witty descriptions of real mundane issues in life. Philip quickly discovers there are others in the town still looking into Sandra’s disappearance, including Kevin Healy a local Garda detective, who was retired on medical grounds and a journalist Joanne McCollum, who’s written wild speculatory pieces on the case.

I got round it by imagining him reading it out loud, so it helped to be familiar with his tv persona. With Dove’s death, Joanne who by now realises she may have been mistaken in blaming Dove is also back in Tullyanna, with more or less the same objectives.This was a wee bit heavy going until I managed to settle in to the author's writing style, which did take a bit longer than usual for me. A town that could almost be considered to be a character itself, so integral to the plot it became during the book. 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. Each of the principal characters reaches an accommodation with the real world, and a kind of elegiac acceptance of it.

His storytelling is punctuated with satirical references to Irish history, popular culture and mythology. Another person near obsessed with Sandra’s disappearance is Kevin Healy, the Garda who was in charge of her case at the time. But these musings help build the story and are often where the dark humour comes from, adding depth to the characters. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.I enjoyed especially that Dove chose to supply the answers through a graphic novel (with hints that he knows only Sharkey would be able to pick up on), and these are not straightforward but clues to be picked up and pieced together which requires the latter’s intelligence and scientific bent (I almost wished we had some illustrations! This is a crime novel with twists, with the latter pertaining not just to “who did it” but to the genre itself - part humorous, part Irish history around the times of “The Troubles” and part true literary endeavour. 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 story keeps you guessing from start to finish, and it has an intriguing bevy of threads woven into it about secrets and the sins of the past. 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. Like a traveller who enjoys the journey as much as reaching their destination, I was in no hurry to reach the end and unravel the central mystery, content to savour each word, each sentence, each paragraph and each chapter of this captivating book. I found it interesting to have three main characters and to see the story from each of their pint of views, however I thought this made the book a little too long and my attention was lost.The residents are full of life, with characters ranging from a corrupt local politician, and a retired Garda who coaches GAA. I got about 140 pages into it, and then jumped to the last 5 chapters to find out what happened, but all in all just felt disappointing and kind of lack the oomph or the excitement for me to really get stuck in. One feature of the novel which is exceptionally good is that, as a crime thriller, it has to have a solution; but here there is a solution but no closure. Dove’s best friend Philip Sharkey, who was with him on the day, left town soon after and stayed away. I didn't always get all of the jokes as I'm not Irish, but really enjoyed the whodunit element of it.