Like all twenty-year-olds, Ryan Cusack is trying to get his head around who he is.
This is not a good time for his boss to exploit his dual heritage by opening a new black market route from Italy to Ireland. It is certainly not a good time for his adored girlfriend to decide he’s irreparably corrupted. And he really wishes he hadn’t accidentally caught the eye of an ornery grandmother who fancies herself his saviour.
There may be a way clear of the chaos in the business proposals of music promoter Colm and in the attention of the charming, impulsive Natalie. But now that his boss’s ambitions have rattled the city, Ryan is about to find out what he’s made of, and it might be that chaos is in his blood.
Reviews
The second novel from the author of the hugely successful debut The Glorious Heresies . . . McInerney's many fans will be pleased to hear her follow up revolves around the further misadventures of Ryan in Cork city.
- Bookseller
The narration is brisk and slick, the dialogue fizzing with acerbic wisecracking.
- Literary Review
Lisa Mcinerney is a writer busily combining the traditions of hardcore Irish crime writing with the kind of fast-talking foul-mouthed wit and gentle good humour that readers will recall from the work of Roddy Doyle, and producing popular state-of-the-nation novels as a consequence.
- Times Literary Supplement
Trainspotting meets Goodfellas . . . McInerney writes with delicious irreverence and her fiction in this book has a fast, filmic quality
- Evening Standard
Lively, entertaining, salty and funny
- Irish Examiner
The plot's a slippery snake of dodgy deals and deadly double crosses, with a series of handbrake turns at the end. It's standard gangster stuff, spiked into originality by the chemical kick of McInerney's prose
- The Spectator
If you like Trainspotting, Peaky Blinders, Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino then this is a rackety, kinetic, hold-your-attention-at-gunpoint book.
- The Times
McInerney writes with enviable verve, swagger and humour
- Mail on Sunday