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Top five Irish mystery books

Published Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 1:08 PM

Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:53 PM

Read more: Mickey Brennan, Ireland, Matt Minogue, Books, Media, Mystery Novels, Martin Harry Greenberg

The Death of An Irish Politician - by Batholomew Gill

The Death of an Irish Politician

By Bartholomew Gill

This is the first book in the widely acclaimed Peter McGarr series of the detective novels.

In Dublin’s Killiney Bay, an American is pulled out of the water, his head split open by a violent blow.

There are a number of pieces of the puzzle that detective Peter McGarr must piece together if he wants to solve this crime: a world-class sailor who ran both his boat and his life aground; the beautiful woman he lived off; and the politician who somehow entangled himself in a murder enquiry. Add an IRA gunrunning plot into the mix, and things start to get a lot more complicated – and dangerous.

The Bold Thing: A Mystery

by Mark Daniel

Mickey Brennan starts off life in a privileged position, but finds himself as a lowly horse trainer at farm in rural Ireland. Just as Brennan wasted away his family’s fortune, so too does he squander away his life: a failed marriage, substance abuse and a prison term for vehicular manslaughter are all part of his dismal existence. Once out of prison, he tries selling animal feed supplements but his former friends don’t want to know him.

An American woman now owns the old Brennan estate; she gives him a job working with her horses. But when she is threatened by blackmailers, she is determined not to walk away – and in doing so, she offers Brennan a chance to redeem himself.

A Stone of the Heart

By John Brady

This is first book in the Inspector Matt Minogue series, and offers a compelling insight into the Troubles. When the body of Jarlath Walsh is discovered on the grounds of Dublin's Trinity College with the head beaten in, Sergeant Matt Minogue suspects that it wasn't a random killing. Walsh was an idealist, but someone wants the detective to believe the young man was a drug-pusher. In a fateful clash near the Northern Ireland border, Inspector Minogue discovers the truth.

Great Irish Detective Stories

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For a comparatively small island, Ireland has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature in all its branches. Irish literature encompasses the Irish and English languages. The most widely-known Irish books are undoubtedly in English. Particularly famous examples of such works are those of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Ireland's oldest literary traditions, however, are found in the Irish language, referred to simply as "Irish." Indeed, Irish has the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin). and the most significant body of written literature (both ancient and recent) of any Celtic language. Furthermore, the historic influence of Irish language traditions, such as a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry, has helped make much English Literature in Ireland quite distinctive from that in other countries. From the older tradition, many Irish books in English inherited a sense of wonder in the face of nature, a narrative style that tends towards the deliberately exaggerated or absurd and a keen sense of the power of satire. Irish books are rooted in Celtic mythology as well as the suffering and hardships the Irish people have experienced over the course of their history. Wit and humor, often in the form of satire or irony, have characterized much of Irish literature. Another key feature in Irish books has been the ample use of wordplay - from the early sagas to the 20th-century experiments of James Joyce. Irish poetry has a long and complex history. Ireland has one of the oldest vernacular literature and poetry traditions in Europe and represents a more or less unbroken cycle from the 6th century to the present day. In addition, since at least the 14th century, poetry in English has also been written in Ireland and by Irish writers abroad. In the 19th century, Irish poets writing in English set out to reinvent the Gaelic tradition in the new language, frequently translating early Irish poets and retelling stories from Celtic mythology in Romantic and Victorian verse and song. Particularly notable in this vein were the lyrics (poetical and musical) of Thomas Moore, author of several volumes of Irish Melodies. The trend reached its high point in the early work of W. B. Yeats. At the beginning of the 20th century, Yeats' style changed under the influence of his contact with modernism. The generation of Irish poets that followed Yeats were, to simplify, divided between those who were influenced by his early Celtic style and those who followed such modernist figures as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, both of whom wrote poetry as well as their better known fiction and drama. During the course of the 20th century, the influence of Yeats has tended to dominate the Irish books world, either as a role model or as someone to rebel against. However, this period also saw the emergence of such significant figures as Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney and Brian Coffey. This period also saw a revival of poetry in Irish, at least partly as a result of government policy decisions in support of the language. The most famous Irish novelist of the 20th century, James Joyce, is often regarded as the father of the literary genre "stream of consciousness" which is best exemplified in his famous work, Ulysses. Other books Joyce is famous for are Finnegans Wake, Dubliners, and the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce's high modernist style had its influence on coming generations of Irish novelists, most notably in the books of Samuel Beckett. Cathal O Sandair (1922-1996), one of the most prolific authors of Irish books, produced over one hundred novels, many of them westerns featuring cowboys and gunfights. The twentieth century saw a number of playwrights come to prominence in the world of Irish books. These included Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Denis Johnston, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, and John B. Keane.

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