Brouhaha

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There were some very punchy characters but I couldn’t make a connection to any of them and this, again, I can only put down to the style of writing. Over the past few days, Kevin, no flies on him, had sensed a tension in the town thanks to Dove Connolly’s poor decision to blow his own head off. of cruelty ("sorry for your trouble, Ma'am") and a smart journalist and an emasculated policeman discarded in the village ditch as the riviting plot unfolds in a series of chapters that are as taut as Pulp Fiction. The writing is very intense and I failed to pick the bones out of the story; not for want of trying mind. His follow-up has taken nearly a quarter of a century to appear, and unfortunately the boldness of his original debut has been replaced by a jarring mixture of whimsy and brutality.

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! But once I did settle into the style and more so, the story (especially the puzzle of what actually happened to Sandra) began to move forward, I started to get more absorbed and really began to want to read on. Ardal grew up in County Monaghan in Ireland, his father was a TD (MP) in the Irish parliament and a cabinet minister. We also believe we have the gift of the gab as a result making out with the Blarney stone, along with every desperate tourist with a whiff of an Irish relative, somewhere in their distant past. As a murder mystery the book has no problem with providing suspects, but I felt that the book ran out of steam midway through.A man with great timing and wit as evidenced in programmes as varied as Father Ted, Death in Paradise and Taskmaster. But I think that’s why I can’t say too much or want to admit to myself how dodge this book was in parts. The storyline moves between the events around the unsolved disappearance of teenager Sandra Mohan in 1994, and the impact of Sharkey, Kevin and Joanne's efforts to finally get to the truth following Dove's death - when all Tullyanna's dirty little secrets come spilling out. Ten years previous to this, Dove’s girlfriend Sandra Mohan (only 16 at the time) had gone missing and was never seen again, and an article by a journalist Joanne McCollum pointed to him as responsible, ruining his reputation.

Sharkey finds himself joining forces with retired Garda Kevin Healy, who is haunted by the fact that he was unable to find out what happened to Sandra, and a local journalist Joanne McCollum who is obsessed with the case. This was a struggle from the beginning up to the point where I collapsed from exhaustion and skipped to the end. We have a very flawed but all the same complex and (as a result) intriguing set of characters; there’s Dove himself who we get to know through memories or the graphic novel and other clues he leaves behind for Sharkey, and the mural he made for the town, poking fun at different elements; Philip Sharkey who has been in self imposed exile (for reasons we learn as the book goes on) but is now a little more confident of facing his fears and doing right by his friend (whom he has in more senses than one betrayed). Each of the characters gradually reveals their complexities and – no pun intended – their troubles, as they tiptoe around a post Good Friday Agreement small town. But while secrets begin to be revealed and ‘new’ facts uncovered, raking up the past is neither easy, nor advisable, especially when there are less than savoury characters involved; one of these is Fergal Coleman, once the local ‘bad boy’ into drugs and much else, now an aspiring politician, still surrounded and supported by his old gang.Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Ireland for the opportunity to review this book in my own way.

This book is part of a Random Things blog tour, to see what the other reviewers thought, visit in their blogs listed below. So many of the complex threads tug on your heart-strings, and I found myself frequently overwhelmed at the beautifully tender way O'Hanlon describes the myriad of emotionally charged scenes - the moments between Kevin and his baby grandson Paul in particular had me weeping every time. The political intrigue, which also abounds through book is handled deftly considering the minefield it was back during the tenuous early days following the Good Friday agreement. However, I am I glad that I kept going as I enjoyed the banter between Joanne, Phillip and Kevin and I was hooked by the final 100 pages, with the great reveal. The female characters seem aggressively overwritten, and the comedic passages are shadowed by the violence.However a local journalist wrote an expose of life in the area and made conclusions about Sandra's disappearance. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Ah, if only one could "put on" - like a favourite t-shirt - the background knowledge required to get this wonderful book up and running! The second thing to say is yes, it is Ardal O’Hanlon, who will always be Father Dougal from Father Ted to me.