What is Declan Burke reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Declan Burke, author of four novels: Eightball Boogie (2003), The Big O (2007), Absolute Zero Cool (2011) and Slaughter’s Hound (2012).

His entry begins:

I tend to read a lot of crime and mystery fiction. That’s partly because I tend to get commissioned as a freelance journalist to review and interview crime and mystery writers, which is hugely enjoyable. Sometimes it can feel a bit like real work, but mostly it’s interesting and fun, not least because I write in the genre myself and almost every book I read qualifies as (koff) research.

I’m currently reading The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis for review, which is the start of a new series for Davis. It features Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of Falco, who was / is a private investigator (here referred to as ‘an informer’) in classical Rome during a very long and successful series. I’m enjoying it a lot: Davis uses the historical detail of the Roman world to great effect, but she’s also happy to give Flavia Albia a hardboiled way of speaking, so that she sounds not unlike a Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky heroine. That book is...[read on]

About The Big O, from the publisher:

Karen's easy life as a receptionist and armed robber is about to change. Rossi, her ex, is getting out of prison any day now. He'll be looking for his motorcycle, his gun, revenge, and the sixty grand he says is his. But he won't be expecting Ray, the new guy Karen's just met, to be in his way. No stranger to the underworld himself, Ray wants out of the kidnapping game now that some dangerous new bosses are moving in.

Meanwhile Frank, a disgraced plastic surgeon, hires Ray to kidnap his ex-wife for the insurance money. But the ex-wife also happens to be Karen's best friend. Can Karen and Ray trust each other enough to work together on one last job? Or will love, as always, ruin everything?

From a writer hailed as "Elmore Leonard with a hard Irish edge" (Irish Mail on Sunday), Declan Burke's The Big O is crime fiction at its darkest and funniest.

Check out the e-book version of The Big O, and learn more about the book and author at  Declan Burke's Crime Always Pays blog.

The Page 99 Test:: The Big O (Irish edition).

The Page 99 Test: The Big O.

Writers Read: Declan Burke.

--Marshal Zeringue