Yeats Is Dead! A Mystery by 15 Irish Writers - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375412972 ISBN 13: 9780375412974

Publisher: Knopf, 2001

Synopsis

“I think he was dead before I shot him.”

With these auspicious words begins a murder mystery so utterly unlike any other that it took fifteen of Ireland’s finest writers (working well below their peak) to bring it to its unlikely conclusion. The plot involves a mad search for the only manuscript of an unpublished novel by James Joyce, and features a stellar cast—including a sadistic sergeant with the unlikely name of Andy Andrews and the unforgettable mob boss Mrs. Bloom, a woman “who had tried everything but drew the line at honesty.” Raucous, raunchy, gratuitously violent and completely hilarious, Yeats Is Dead! is a diabolically entertaining mulligan stew of a novel. James Joyce would be proud.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph O’Connor’s debut novel, Cowboys and Indians, was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize. His work has been widely translated and has won many prizes. He lives in Ireland.

Yeats Is Dead! is a novel written by fifteen Irish authors as a fund-raiser for Amnesty International, a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. Amnesty International works independently of all government and political ideologies to: secure the release of prisoners of conscience—people detained solely because of their beliefs, identity or ethnic origin, who have neither used nor advocated violence; ensure fair and prompt trials for all political prisoners; and end all use of torture, political killings, “disappearances” and the death penalty.

From the Back Cover

"Despite the playful inaccuracy of its title - Yeats will never die - this is
a splendid venture, full of wit and high spirits. A great romp of a read."

--John Banville

Reviews

Sponsored by Amnesty International to help raise funds for its work, this round-robin mystery, coauthored by 15 esteemed Irish writers, including Frank McCourt, Roddy Doyle and Conor McPherson, is more a literary curiosity than a compelling read. After one of two policemen who are moonlighting as ruffians accidentally shoots a man they've been questioning, Nestor and Roberts find themselves on the body-strewn trail of the mysterious symbol Y8S=+ (no rewards for puzzling it out), a miraculous skin cream and a previously unknown last novel by James Joyce. Nods to Ulysses abound. A copy of the book figures prominently in the plot, while Nestor and Roberts work for a mobster named Mrs. Bloom. Though some lilting Irish prose and notably bawdy passages will appeal, the novel proceeds by fits and starts to a preordained conclusion. There are some keen observations and an understated wit that verges on the epigrammatic ("Her blue eyes glittered with the absence of mental health"). But the eccentricity grows mechanical and a little bit of the blarney goes a long way; consequently the braggadocio becomes forced. ("He hated Bewley's, hated its claustrophobic mahogany interior, its slow black-clad waitresses with their big culchie faces. And yet he always seemed to end up here whenever the black dog of depression was pissing down his back.") Thus, while this mulligan stew of a mystery is sometimes tasty, it's hardly nit picking to point out that the porridge contains more than a few lumps. (June 16)Forecast: With a 75,000-copy first printing set for Bloomsday, plus some big-name contributors, this should attract plenty of initial attention, but may be too quirky for lasting appeal.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The authors who each contributed a chapter to this romp include Roddy Doyle, Frank McCourt, and Marian Keyes, and their protagonists are two decent sorts who beat up guys on the side to earn some extra dough. Eventually, murder intervenes.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Think of a Dublin pub. Fifteen Irish writers, including Frank McCourt, Conor McPherson, and Anthony Cronin, line the bar. And they launch into a tale, a mystery it is; Roddy Doyle starts things off with "I think he was dead before I shot him," and each storyteller takes it upon him/herself to pick up the story where the previous speaker left it. Yeats Is Dead! is a progressive feast in which some of Ireland's most famous contemporary writers top each other, chapter by chapter, in a mystery centering on the suspicious death of a man who may have harbored an unpublished manuscript by James Joyce. The result is not a mystery at all, but an exercise in embellishment, a send-up of crooks and grifters and cops, a bravura display of Irish wit and word power that hurtles to a miraculous wrapping up. Great fun and a great showcase for contemporary Irish writers. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter one

"I think he was dead before I shot him."

"I beg your pardon?" said Roberts.

"I think he was dead," said Nestor. "Already. Before . . . you know."

Roberts looked down at the dead man.

"He was talking to me," Roberts said. "He was right in the middle of a fucking sentence."

"But."

"'Tell her I'll have it by . . .' if I recall it correctly."

"But."

"And now," said Roberts, "we'll never know what he was going to say. Tonight? Christmas? The light of the silvery moon? Holy Jesus, what a mess."

"But," said Nestor.

"Yes?" snapped Roberts.

"He went really pale, like, and he"--Nestor grabbed his left tit--"Well, he . . ."

"Clutched?" Roberts offered.

"Yeah," said Nestor. "He clutched his chest."

"He had a heart attack. Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yeah," said Nestor. "He looked terrible. His face. I've seen it before. I've a cousin."

"Who had a heart attack."

"Yeah."

"And he looked just like that."

"Yeah."

"And he's still alive."

"Yeah."

"Oh good," said Roberts. "Maybe our friend here will stand up in a minute and shake himself. But hang on, though. You didn't shoot your cousin, sure you didn't?"

"Well no."

"And why would you have?" said Roberts. "Sure, he's your cousin."

". . . I," said Nestor.

And then Roberts hit him. Hard.

"What'll I do with you?" Roberts said.

And he hit him again, another almost friendly whack across the ear, harmless but for the car keys clasped between his fingers.

Nestor ducked away to a corner. He knocked over a pouffe and the mug of tea perched on it, placed there by the dead man four, five minutes before, just as Roberts had knocked on his door and walked in with Nestor.

"That'll stain," said Roberts.

The rug, the shaggy fleece of a synthetic sheep, was already soaking up the tea. Roberts took the centre pages from the Daily Mirror beside the pouffe and placed then gently over the stain. He patted the paper.

"So," he said.

Nestor was examining his ear. His right hand was still holding the gun. He drew back his head and nutted the wall. It clanged.

The dead man's home was made of tin. In a field near Courtown or Skerries it would have been a mobile home. Here, in the filthy backyard of a ruined cottage on the edge of the very edge of Dublin, it was a shack. Four tin walls; a tin roof that was snowing rust. The caravan was lopsided, up on assorted bricks and one flat wheel, surrounded, almost invaded by nettles and weeds that swayed and stank. Hardly a thing inside, only a few stacks of mouldy old newspapers, a grimy crumpled poster of James Joyce on the wall.

Roberts owned a house in Rathmines. With the help of his sister's husband, he'd converted it into thirteen bedsits. He looked around him now; a few bits of chipboard, a couple of extra beds and he could have squeezed in four students, even six, no problem--the dead body wouldn't have been noticed in the middle of their filth and parties. The place had potential. He'd find out who owned it.

He felt it wobble when he stood upright.

"So," he said.

Nestor had a handkerchief to his ear.

"She won't be happy," said Roberts. "She won't be happy at all at all." He was talking about Mrs. Bloom.

"She told us to worry him," said Roberts. "Does he look worried to you?"

"No," said Nestor.

"No," Roberts agreed. "I don't think I've ever seen a less worried-looking man."

"He had a heart attack," said Nestor.

"That would account for the hole in his chest," said Roberts.

"It was an accident."

"You really think I'm gonna go back and tell her that, do you?"

"He clutched his chest."

"I'll clutch your bollocks with pliers if you ever mention his chest or his heart again. Say after me: I shot him."

"But I didn't mean to."

"Say it."

"I shot him."

"Good. Fine. Now we're getting somewhere. You shot him. He had something she wanted. We were to worry him. A few slaps, a little glimpse at the gun there. A straightforward enough job of work. But you went and shot the poor chap. Didn't you?"

"It went off."

"Yes," said Roberts. "I noticed."

"It was the gloves."

"What?"

"They're new."

"They're nice."

"They're a bit . . ."

"Stiff?"

"Yeah," said Nestor.

"I know the way," said Roberts.

He toed the dead man's foot.

"It was the gloves did it, mister," he told the body. Then he looked at Nestor again.

"What am I going to say to her?"

Nestor said nothing.

"Well?"

"I don't know."

"And does that worry you at all?"

"Yeah."

"Good," said Roberts. "Because it worries me too. It worries me a lot. And I need the company."

Mrs. Bloom wasn't exactly their boss. Neither of them was financially dependent on her. They both had day jobs, permanent and pensionable, well away from Mrs. Bloom. In addition Roberts had his bedsits, and two or three other pots on the Baby Belling. He had a share in a kissogram service. He owned the '87 Lancia that ferried the French maids and naughty nurses and television continuity announcers--a Roberts invention, and a hit--out and around the city, from sad to sadder bastard, seven days a week. He held the croissant and baguette franchise in a twenty-four-hour shop around the corner from his bedsits.

"If you gave shite a nice smell you'd find plenty of people willing to buy it at four in the morning," he told Dymphna (the nun, schoolgirl and continuity announcer).

"I know," said Dymphna, as she cleared the steam off the passenger window and looked out for the right address.

"Talk dirty to me," said Roberts.

"Again?"

"Go on."

"The Flood Tribunal."

He had a bit of set-aside near his brother's farm, down home. He had a team of twenty-three boys and girls on the road throughout the year, selling guaranteed Irish Christmas cards, made in the Philippines, for spina bifida, Bosnian hospitals and Roberts. And he had one or two other things going as well. This and that. He saw possibilities everywhere. He clicked awake at five every morning, ideas already pinging around him before he had his feet in his slippers. An entrepreneur. That was what Roberts was. "You have to be born one," a woman sitting beside him at a Department of Industry training seminar had once said. And Roberts had agreed with her. He had been born one.

"That bollocks still has his communion money," it was often said of Roberts. About most people that was never meant literally, but in Roberts's case it was true, literally. Roberts's communion money, all £3 13s. 8d. of it in shiny old coins he had lovingly polished, was in a tobacco tin one foot under the sod, five paces--adult paces; ten on his communion day--to the right of the hinged gate of the field that was now his set-aside. Now the EU paid him money for doing nothing with the field. He wasn't even allowed to walk into it; there was a satellite keeping an eye on all the empty fields in Ireland, making sure that they stayed empty. But one of these cloudy nights he was going to sneak into his field, dig up the tobacco tin--Condor--and bring the gleaming contents to a coin dealer on Aughrim Street, a member of the International Association of Professional Numismatists and a subscriber to a Latvian porn magazine that Roberts distributed by hand to thirteen Dublin addresses on the first Friday of the month, between half-five and seven in the morning, before going to work. He would do it just to find out how much the coins were worth. Then he'd bury them again. In a new place.

Entrepreneur. He loved the word.

"What's that French word that means businessman?" he'd once asked his wife as he sat up to the fire pretending to do the Independent crossword.

"Entrepreneur," said Patsy.

"What?" said Roberts.

"Entrepreneur."

"Spell it for me," said Roberts.

Nestor wasn't an entrepreneur. Along with leprosy and a ride against a train station wall, an idea was something that Nestor had never had. But still he made a reasonable living. He had the day job, of course, not that it brought in much. So four nights a week, in black bomber jacket and wired for sound, he stood at the entrance of Major Disaster's, a pub in the basement of Little Los Angeles, a carpark and total shopping experience at the top of Grafton Street, Europe's sexiest retail sewer. He let young couples and gangs of girls go past him but stopped lone men and British stag parties, if they were wearing either kilts or co-ordinated T-shirts.

"It's the national costume of Scawtland!"

"It's a dress," said Nestor's colleague, Rattigan.

Nestor rarely spoke. He was never violent, always polite; he went to the toilet only during his breaks. He never drank, didn't smoke, never pawed drunk women. He stood in front or stood aside and, when called upon to do so by the voice in his ear, went inside and escorted people out. Rattigan, who drank, smoked and often went to the toilet against the Telecom building across the street, hated him.<...

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375412972
• ISBN 13: 9780375412974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: O'Connor Joseph