Critical Mick

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The Bloomsday Dead
by Adrian McKinty
Serpent's Tail, 2008

Tourists! Your Bloomin' Attention Please!

Every year, tens of thousands of Irish-Americans touch down in Dublin city, their holidays devoted to the goal of soaking up their ancestral culture like so many hyphenated sponges. Many of these visitors purchase Ulysses, a masterpiece by one of the 20th century's most influential authors, James Joyce (1882-1941).

Those tourists are big fat suckers. I tried reading Ulysses when studying literature at UCD. I worked hard on that novel for months. In despair I reported slow progress to my tutor. "What guidebook are you using?" he inquired. Guidebooks? What? "You're not trying to follow Ulysses without assistance, are you?" It turns out that there's more academic scholarship on Joyce than there is on Shakespeare, and even with PhD's most of those authorities can't comprehend what's going on.

Ulysses! Just read the wikipedia entry, fellow DFA's. Otherwise you'll go home with an impression that Irish writers (and their colossal guidebooks) are something to spend a fortune on, get three chapters into and then leave with a lightened heart in the Departures bin at Dublin Airport. Let me recommend instead a book accessible to readers who are not assumed to be proficient in Victorian etiquette and ancient Greek.

Adrian McKinty's The Bloomsday Dead takes place in a single day- the sixteenth of June, 2004. That's the centenary of the events in Joyce's novel, which since 1954 has been celebrated annually as Bloomsday. Joyce's goal was to distil all of life and being into one day. McKinty manages much the same, only with a lot more action. Through a series of chapters which mirror those of Ulysses, his hero Michael Forsythe must come out of his twelve-year Witness Protection Program refuge, battle for his life, find a missing child and survive some of the most dangerous figures on three continents.

That's one of the qualities I love about The Bloomsday Dead- Joyce limited all of Leopold Bloom's wanderings to one city. Michael Forsythe's day takes him through four nations with Jack Bauer-like speed. (If you enjoyed 24 before its characters, tortures and twists became cliché, this Dead trilogy delivers.) McKinty's descriptions of each locale are written with red-hot clarity and style far more memorable than any tourist guide-book. Here's a brief episode, completely free of plot spoilers, that takes place in Belfast:

Forsythe barrels through a world full of such vivid images. I am deliberately not revealing a single beat of the plot, and encourage any interested reader to ignore the blurb on the novel's back. Let this one take you itself.

First-class tickets! Crooked politicians! The FBI! Cops with Glocks! Milkshakes! Tire irons, .38's, RPG's and flick knives! Literary allusions! Guys who lick money to prove it is poison-free! And a scorching hot redhead! The Bloomsday Dead has every element that a completely satisfying thriller should have- and it sends the reader away with vivid imagery of Dublin and Belfast. This is brass-knuckled, brainy, climactically cracking good craic.

Though The Bloomsday Dead is the concluding instalment in McKinty's Michael Forsythe series, there's no gaps evident. I picked it up on a friend's recommendation and read it straight through without any head scratching. My few niggles are that some of the Joyce similarities felt forced (the first line, for instance) and some of the baddies are similar to what's appeared in books before.

You crazy babe, Bathsheba!

Critical Mick says: I recommend Denis McEoin/Jonathan Aycliffe's The Lost over Stoker's Dracula, too, so I may well be making enemies. Still, for a tour and a taste of Irish culture, skip Ulysses and pick up a masterpiece guaranteed to send you home happy, educated and enlightened- Adrian McKinty's The Blmsday Dead. This one will be hard to beat for the 2009 award for Best Book Mick Read in 2009.

I wantcha!

"The Bloomsday Dead pulsates with break-neck action and wry literary references; McKinty's distinctly Irish voice packs a ferocious punch." Gregory Carr of Read Ireland.

Eurocrime have posted a review of The Bloomsday Dead.

And a second, bonus review!

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2009 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 28 March, 2009.