From Publishers Weekly
Irish playwright Hughes follows up his successful contemporary crime debut, The Wrong Kind of Blood (2006), with another gripping and gritty whodunit set in his native Dublin. PI Ed Loy, who's still adjusting to his return to Dublin after two decades in Los Angeles, gets hired by affluent dentist Shane Howard, the son of a legendary local doctor, to locate Shane's errant teenage daughter, Emily. Loy quickly tracks down Emily, but the sordid intimate relationship she's enjoying with a cousin proves only to be the tip of the iceberg for the Howard family's dysfunction. After several murders, including that of Emily's boyfriend, Loy finds that the roots of the violence may be in the distant past. The sharp writing and strong local color distinguish this novel from the common run of thrillers, though the pileup of corpses at the end is an overly neat way of tying up too many loose ends. (Apr.)
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From
Starred Review Irish playwright-turned-novelist Hughes, who burst onto the Irish noir scene with The Wrong Kind of Blood (2006), returns with another seedy thriller. Private eye Ed Loy, lately returned to Dublin after 20 years in Los Angeles, is hired by a rather obnoxious dentist to find out what happened to his teenage daughter (pornographic pictures of whom were recently sent to the father). Ed has little trouble locating the missing girl, but matters are complicated when the girl's ex-boyfriend--and porn filmmaker--turns up dead. The list of suspects is lengthy, from the girl's parents (although neither of them seems to care too much what happens to her now), to her new friends, to people with whom the murdered man had unsavory business dealings. As with his debut novel, Hughes makes the mean streets of Dublin come alive, making us smell the fetid air and walk the trouble-laden sidewalks. The author has corrected the one flaw with the first novel--an excessively complicated story--and as a result, this one positively steamrolls through from beginning to end. Pair Hughes with other new faces on the hard-boiled Dublin beat, including Gene Kerrigan ( The Midnight Choir, 2007) and Ingrid Black (The Dead, 2004). David Pitt
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