The Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Betrayal - Hardcover

Hughes, Declan

3.68

853 ratings by Goodreads

9780060825461: The Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Betrayal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060825464 ISBN 13: 9780060825461

Publisher: William Morrow, 2006

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In a superbly woven tale of shocking suspense, award-winning playwright Declan Hughes delivers an unforgettable saga about the ties of blood that bind beyond the grave, and the lives that are irrevocably changed when a long journey home unearths a legacy of murderous betrayal

After more than two decades away, private detective Ed Loy returns from L.A. to his hometown of Dublin for his mother's funeral. But his grieving soon takes an unexpected turn when his old classmate Linda Dawson pleads with him to find her missing husband, Peter. As if a worried wife with a seductive persona weren't enough to keep Loy occupied, his childhood pal turned small-time criminal, Tommy Owens, shows up on Loy's doorstep with a hard-luck story and a recently fired gun.

When Loy finds an old photograph of his long-missing father on Peter Dawson's boat, and a corpse is discovered in the foundations of the local town hall, things begin to get personal. Then a murky property deal linked to the Dawson family not only threatens to expose the corrupt secrets concealed behind the great gates of the mansions on the hill, but also leads Loy to the land below, a violent underworld of drug dealing, extortion, and murder presided over by the notorious Halligan brothers, local purveyors of organized criminal mayhem.

As he tries to lay the dead to rest, the case becomes a dark obsession, and Ed Loy finds that the truth of the present can only be fully understood by uncovering the secrets of the past, and that in Ireland, everything -- and everyone -- is connected.

Filled with intrigue, exhilarating suspense, incredible local flavor, a superbly drawn cast of unforgettable characters, and writing as rich and colorful as the streets of Dublin themselves, The Wrong Kind of Blood will keep thriller fans breathless until its final spine-tingling revelation.

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About the Author:

An award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Declan Hughes is cofounder and former artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company. He was Writer-in-Association with the Abbey Theatre and lives in Dublin with his wife and two daughters.

From Booklist:

PI Edward Loy returns to Ireland from California to bury his mother and lands himself in a knotty thicket of iniquity, as the Irish real-estate boom unearths old corpses and creates a few new ones. Retained by a profligate lady friend to find her missing husband, Loy wades into the labyrinthine dealings of two conspicuous families, the land--developing Dawsons and the drug-dealing Halligans, who may have more in common than either would like to admit. Loy is the sort of brash PI who would as soon use his head for inflicting blunt-force trauma as for cogitation. Hughes lacks his countryman Ken Bruen's knack for making such feral types compelling, and his fine turn of phrase is marred by a proclivity for long expository speeches. On the other hand, he vividly conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of the Dublin streets. He's clearly a cut or two below such gritty Irish bards as Bruen, John Connolly, and Adrian McKinty, but he bears watching. David Wright
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