An Irish Solution

Oct 7, 2024 1:26 PM

Author:Cormac Millar

An Irish Solution

Seamus Joyce has got a few things on his mind.

He has just been appointed Acting Director of iDEA, the Irish Drug Enforcement Agency. His wife is in hospital, dying of an unidentified ailment. And he is starting to question the purpose of his own existence.

It's a tricky time at iDEA: an ambitious new Minister for Justice is anxious to secure a few big scalps in the Dublin drug trade, and Joyce is expected to put himself on the front line of the fight. Soon he begins to suspect that the police, in league with the Minister, are bending the rules - and he still doesn't quite understand what the rules are.

Why is money being paid into his bank account from an unnamed source in Liechtenstein? Why are his phones being tapped? And why are troubled schoolgirl and a diminutive nun accusing him of being at the heart of a lethal conspiracy

Reviews

A first-rate thriller-blending Gothic surrealism-with tropical depravities-Recommended.

—— Guardian

As usual, Rendell mirrors aspects of the case in the leading characters' personal lives and her cleverly understated writing bathes them and their actions in a glow of reality that sets her writing above that of her many imitators.

—— Time Out

As always with Ruth Rendell's intricately thought-out novels, nothing is as simple as it seems.

—— Sunday Express

Superb plotting and psychological insight make this another Rendell gripper

—— Woman & Home

Utterly absorbing

—— Sunday Telegraph

Ruth Rendell is not only the finest crime novelist there is, but one of the finest novelists writing in the English language

—— Gerald Kaufman, Scotsman

Brilliantly empathetic. Believe the hype: a brilliant, heart-warming book

—— Scotsman

In telling a painful story in the voice of a 15-year-old boy with Asperger's, Haddon broadens ordinary minds and helps to understand how they work, too.

—— Daily Telegraph

Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy

—— Ian McEwan

I have never read anything quite like Mark Haddon's funny and agonizingly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies; you won't want to lend yours out

—— Arthur Golden, author of 'Memoirs of a Geisha'

Original, moving and entertaining for adults as well as for older children

—— Julia Donaldson , Daily Express

A deservedly acclaimed read.

—— Time Out London

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