Review of Last Orders by Caimh McDonnell (2018, McFori Ink)

Two bodies are discovered buried in the Wicklow Mountains. Former policeman, Bunny McGarry, knows that the evidence trail will eventually lead to his door. Always somewhat unhinged and further traumatised from ten days at the hands of a mad-man the previous year, Bunny begins to come apart at the seams, talking to ghosts, seeing trackers everywhere, and acting more erratically than usual. Bunny’s two business partners are not fairing much better. Having built a successful investigations company, Paul seems determined to destroy it through a pointless tit-for-tat rivalry with a competitor that quickly escalates into all-out war. Brigit is in despair over Paul’s actions, the perilous state of the company, and Bunny’s mental health. Both situations are spiralling out of control and neither seems set to end well.

Last Orders is the third book in the Dublin trilogy, plus prequel, and marries both together, with the events of the prequel catching up with Bunny McGarry and effecting the fate of MCM Investigations, which is already hanging in the balance due to a feud with another company. McDonnell runs the tale as two strands – the investigation into the deaths of two men found buried in the Wicklow Mountains, and Paul and Bridget’s war with the Kelleher brothers – that become entwined through Bunny administering a dose of rough justice to a cheating gigolo. It should have been great fun, but the story felt too staged and contrived, moving from one set-piece to another, the humour a little flat with few laugh-out-loud moments, and the denouement was pretty much signalled from the start. The characters are somewhat pale shadows of themselves – Bunny is missing some verve, Paul seems to have become someone else – and the bionic FBI agent Alana Dove is straight from the ‘larger-than-life and completely unbelievable’ casting couch. Comic crime capers often suffer from stagey-ness and oddball characters, but in the best of them – as with earlier books in this series – they are inherent or incidental to the story rather than being its crux. While the story has its moments, for me it’s the weakest of the books so far.

Review of Angels in the Moonlight by Caimh McDonnell (McFori Ink, 2018)

1999, Dublin. A well-organised and ruthless gang are committing armed robbery. The police have a good idea as to who is behind the clever heists, but they are smart and their local neighbourhood protects them given they had rid the area of drug dealers. Detective Bunny McGarry and his partner Detective Sergeant Tim ‘Gringo’ Spain are drafted in to help with the investigation. Both have their own problems – Spain has separated from his wife and has a gambling habit, McGarry has fallen for an American jazz singer who is living with an order of nuns, on the run from a crime committed in New York. As the cat and mouse game between the police and gang intensifies, so does McGarry’s ardour for Simone. The path to justice and love though are never smooth, especially when Bunny McGarry, a man who rubs both his colleagues and criminals up the wrong way, is involved. 
 
Angels in the Moonlight is a prequel to McDonnell’s ‘Dublin trilogy’ focusing on a key case and romance of Detective Bunny McGarry, a Cork man with a passion for hurling who is serving in Dublin. McGarry is a delightful character, a man with a distain for authority and a trouble-maker, but fiercely loyal to friends, committed to upholding justice, and with a soft, romantic side that he keeps well hidden. McDonnell exposes these traits through the investigation of an armed gang of robbers and his wooing of an American jazz singer hiding in Dublin. As with the Dublin trilogy, the story moves at a relatively quick clip, has a number of well-penned, colourful characters, and has a streak of dark humour running throughout with a number of belly-laugh moments. The scenes with the order of nuns and the hurling matches were a delight, with some wonderfully witty dialogue. The two parallel storylines were interesting, though both were well signposted and fairly predictable. Overall, a fun and funny read.

Review of The Day That Never Comes by Caimh McDonnell (McFori Ink, 2017)

Summer in Dublin. Activists led by a wayward priest have taken over the headquarters of a failed bank to house homeless people.  A vengeful, new organisation, Puca, wants rough justice for those that led Ireland to bankruptcy.  Three developers of Skylark properties, a property complex riddled with build quality issues that went bust as the bottom fell out of Irish economy, leave court after their trial collapses on a technicality.  A stunning blonde asks MCM Investigations to determine if one of the Skylark developers is cheating on her with his wife.  Paul Mulchrone needs the money, but he’s got problems of his own.  His business partners are not talking to him: Nurse Conroy, his ex-girlfriend is still steaming mad at him for cheating on her; former Detective Sergeant Bunny McGarry has disappeared.  And Maggie, the ex-police dog foisted on him has an attitude problem and a thirst for beer. Mulchrone is an amateur investigator at best and the friend he recruits to help him tail Jerome Hartigan is just as hopeless.  As the hapless pair trail round Dublin, Puca start to murder members of the Skylark Three and those associated with them, and the people of Dublin are being whipped up into a bitter frenzy.  Can Mulchrone, his pal, Phil, and Maggie discover who is driving the violent undercurrent and halt the madness?

The Day That Never Comes is the second book in Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin trilogy.  In this outing, the hapless Paul Mulchrone has started a new private investigation company with Nurse Conroy and former Detective Sergeant Bunny McGarry.  However, it already appears to be hitting the rocks, with Nurse Conroy refusing to speak to Paul, and McGarry missing in action.  Mulchrone is left to keep the show on the road, but even he’ll admit to being Dublin’s worst private investigator.  His task is trying to trail a property developer involved in large-scale corruption, embezzlement and building control violations.  It should be straightforward but someone is murdering the developer’s colleagues and he may well be on the hit list as well.  Like the first book, the tale is great fun; witty throughout and with a number of laugh out loud moments.  At the same time it’s got all the elements of a decent crime tale.  The characterisation is excellent, especially the no-nonsense Nurse Conroy and the slightly psychotic Bunny McGarry, a man who administers his own brand of justice with a hurley. The plot is well constructed, with McDonnell interweaving a number of strands – including a police investigation line, phone-ins to a radio chat show, and flashbacks to McGarry dealing with an earlier incident of planning corruption – that builds to a nice denouement. And there is a strong sense of place and context; the story set in Dublin, a city still simmering with resentment at the state of the economy and fallen personal fortunes after the financial crash.  Overall, a very nice comic crime caper that delivers both the laughs and decent crime story.

Review of A Man With One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell (2016, McFori Ink)

Paul Muchrone scrapes by living off a small inheritance which stipulates he must volunteer six hours a week to charity.  For this he works as a ‘granny whisperer’, keeping those with dementia company by pretending to be one of their relatives.  When nurse Brigit Conroy asks him to see a new terminally ill patient in return for a lift home he reluctantly agrees. The man, however, mistakes Paul for the son of an old associate and stabs him in the shoulder before dying.  It turns out the patient was a notorious criminal who had been on the run for thirty years after a famous kidnapping case.  Soon after a second attempt is made on Paul’s life and he and Brigit are forced on the run.  Unable to trust the police, except for soon-to-be-retired DI Jimmy Stewart and the unstable and law-unto-himself DS Bunny McGarry, the only solution to Paul and Brigid’s predicament is to try and solve the kidnapping cold case.

I have a fondness for comic crime capers and A Man With One of Those Faces is very firmly within that genre, with an assortment of larger-than-life characters, plenty of one-line zingers, sarcastic exchanges, slapstick action, and lashings of dark humour throughout.  The central hook is the classic ‘wrong person in the wrong place’, with Paul Muchrone meeting an old terminally ill patient who mistakes him for someone else and tries to kill him.  Having survived that he then becomes a loose thread that needs snipping in case he might know something incriminating, regardless of whether he does or not.  With a leak in the police force and no-one to turn to the only way to survive seems to be to solve an old crime.  Aiding Paul is a feisty nurse, an unstable, rogue cop, a gun-toting elderly widower, a hormonally challenged pregnant solicitor, and Jimmy Stewart, a cop who is remarkably like a Jimmy Stewart character.  The result is an enjoyable caper tale that keeps the reader smiling and has several laugh-out loud moments.  I thought it was great up until the denouement, where the story seemed to run a little out of steam and lost its way a little.  Nonetheless, it was a fun read and I’m looking forward to the next in the series.  If you like stories by Colin Bateman, Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey and Janet Evanovich then you’ll enjoy A Man With One of Those Faces.