Critical Mick

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Reviews by the Clown that All Other Critics Want to Strangle with a Black Turtleneck

The Colour of Blood
Declan Hughes
John Murray, 2007

A Hardman in the Family

Discussing Shamus Award winner Declan Hughes' second Irish "Private I" novel through yet another UNRULY REVIEW, Critical Mick takes you to the unruly schoolyard of an extrordinarily exclusive primary school....

"Oh yeah?" Bill challenged, narrowed eyes gloating so's I'd know his toadies had the recess monitor distracted down the far end of the car park. He stepped up. "So who's this great uncle of yours, then?"

I stood right up, chest to chest. "Ed Loy," I announced, then repeated over his false hyena laughter: "My uncle Ed Loy could whip the snot out of your stupid bleedin' uncle."

The Cajun kid had been expelled yesterday. The other guy they'd locked into the American equivalent of St. Patrick's Institution, a place they called Juvie Hall. After yesterday's carnage, there was no way anyone was going to go near the topic of whose father was tougher.

Bill Marlowe, that fatarse punk, kept snorting his false, angry laugh, his megaphone mouth aimed to either side of us and then behind. "Oo, the Paddy had a hardman in his family! ED LOY. Maybe I'd be all scared- if I'd ever heard of him!"

Shouts all around.

"You will," I promised. "He's going to make it big."

Bill just kept haw-hawing out his snot. His big nose and his big famous uncle that he kept running on about! Never giving any of us new kids a word in. The stuck-up tosser.

"So your Uncle Ed- what makes him so great, huh? He ever found a missing lady?"

"Wouldn'tya just know- my uncle got called to find a missing lady just last Halloween. The 19-year-old daughter of this big rich family that lives in the money part of Dublin? All these naked pictures of her were delivered to her dad and a demand for fifty thousand. Did this guy call the cops? No. He called Ed Loy. That guy was Dr. John Howard- a Doctor! So he's smart."

"I seen a naked lady."

"Yer ma doesn't count, Bill. EVERYONE's seen that!"

His fists balled up and his gapped teeth barred. His arms were grabbed by two cronies, hissing the name of a teacher patrolling close.

I went in for some points. "My Uncle Ed returned that girl home safe the very first night. I bet it took your uncle days and days."

"That's right, huh? Your uncle ever beat anybody up?" Bill's arm shook free. He landed a punch on my thin black tie.

Declan Hughes was not the first to use this excellent title. One of Critical Mick's favorite writers, Brian Moore, wrote a political thriller entitled The Colour of Blood about a man of God behind the Iron Curtain. Brilliant stuff!

I jabbed him straight back in his flabby Transformers tee shirt. "During that missing lady case, Uncle Ed solved a whole string of crimes. He stepped on toes," and I stomped Bill's pristine white Nikes. "That got him jumped by two thugs what ran the whole estate- and this an estate where the cops don't even go! The scumbags had a Sig." "Big deal! I have a whole pack of cigs in my schoolbag." "No, you daft wank. A Sig Sauer. Don't ye know yer handguns?" As his piggy face boiled a hotter red, I added an American phrase he'd understand: "Duh!" "I knew that! I was just joking." But Bill's weak cover was laughed to bits by everyone except his own gang. "My Uncle Ed, these bastards smacked him in the face so's the pointy bit on the end of the gun cut him, inches long! He punched and kicked and beat the bejaysus out the both of them. Then Uncle Ed didn't even get stitches put in, just walked around for days not even thinking about the massive injury again." Now that's tough!

Bill struggled for a comeback. I blanked him and stared one of his toadies straight in his gap-toothed face. "Even a huge gash like that didn't stop my uncle from picking up the doctor's red-hot sister. She couldn't keep her hands off of him!"

"Hey, that happens to my uncle all the time!" Bill hollered, trying to regain his status of playground big-man. "His clients always wind up falling for him."

"Does your uncle bang 'em on the stairs?"

"What?"

"Ye heard me, Bill- is he so irresistible that the ladies can't even wait until that get a room?"

"Uh- yeah! He bangs on the ladies everywhere. He's even taught me how to be irresistance to them."

"Then you wouldn't mind explaining to alls of us here exactly how that works?"

"What?" panic filled the braggart's eyes.

I delayed just long enough that he might be thinking I'd forgot about the question, then I nailed Bill with it: "Go on, so, and tell us how this banging thing works with a man and a lady."

Bill's uncle had been a badass back in the 1930's, an old geezer who had been too polite to go into details back in his day and had long since forgotten them. Open laughter rebelled against the fallen playground king. Bill shuffled from Nike to Nike, stammering with the shocked disbelief of an American Idol reject.

Bold bastard that I am, I lit up a John Players Blue right in front of everybody. I stepped right up to Bill and put menace in my smoke-stinging, bloodshot eye. "Tell yous what, ya virgin: I'll ask my uncle Ed to send around his sidekick. He's this mate who goes door to door, selling dirty DVD's of a man doing it with two ladies!" An appreciative noise swelled. "It's impressive stuff alright- I've seen that and much more. Doesn't your uncle have such a colorful friend whose social connections help move cases forward? No? Ah well," I chuckled together with my new best friends all around the playground. "That's a bit sad, Marlowe, that you and your uncle are such a Billy-No-Mates."

Tears pooled in those fat piggy eyes. Bill bit his lip and ran, bawling that he would tell the teacher. We all just laughed. What a tosser.

That Monaghan girl, the gorgeous one who'd always been Bill's moll, ran to my side. "Say, your uncle Ed sounds pretty cool! Are there more like him? Are you just the first of the Irish students who'll be sent here?

I gave her a drag of my cig and thought of the Saxon kid, the Rigby boy and that Taylor looper who was always sniffing glue. "Ah, there's a few alright," I began, but the bell was ringing.

Time for another boring hour of Surveillance Theory and Practice, the most mindknumbing class here at The Academy for Private Investigation Preparation. My moll and me watched that Hammer arselicker trip over the hand-me-down trenchcoat that he thought was so cool, his rush for the schoolhouse door rewarded with a smack of his head off cold concrete. The eejit!

As if there's anything you can learn from a book.

Critical Mick's Patented Hardboil Checklist Alcoholic Ex-Cop Hero? Kind of, on all three accounts... Serial Killers? Wisecracks? Wiseguys? can't remember any, and Dead Bodies? Posh People who Turn Out to be Scumbags? Interesting Locations?   Redhead Love Interest?   Spooky Shit?

Critical Mick says: Declan Hughes won the 2007 Shamus Award for Best First Novel. This follow-up, The Colour of Blood turns a private eye on the rich rugby set that Ross O'Carroll Kelly takes the piss out of. There's more than one way to reveal a rotten core.

Another (more straightforward) review of Declan Hughes' The Colour of Blood can be found at Crime Always Pays

No secret message today, sorry!

Declan Hughes was New Mystery Reader Magazine'as featured author in April 2008! Critical MIck sez: read their interview, punk!

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2007 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 22 August, 2007.