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Summing up Declan Hughes's books in a nutshell isn't tricky: Irish PI Ed Loy is strapped for cash, takes a case he'd rather not have to, gets drawn into a sector of Dublin society and their sordid past history, and sleeps with an unsuitable woman. So it's business as usual in THE DYING BREED. This time out he's yanked into the horse racing set. It's nearly Christmas and Father Vincent Tyrrell wants Ed to track down a missing man. Except he hasn't got a lot to go on, apart from a name. But Ed soon makes a gory discovery . . . and then the violence and bodies go into over-drive. Hughes has taken the American PI tradition and given it a distinctly Irish twist. And he has mixed results. What works without a doubt is 21st century Dublin and Ireland, struggling to shake off the "saints and scholars" mantle. But what is less satisfactory is that he keeps the clichés of the PI form. And that's problematic when it comes to his portrayal of women, who are either tarts, dragons, or lesbians. In the previous books, sections of Dublin society have ended up skewered by Hughes's faintly jaundiced eye. In THE DYING BREED, though, you never get much of a feel for the horsy folk, and I kept having to flick back to remind myself who some of them were. The only characters of any depth were the complex Father Tyrrell and Ed's damaged friend Tommy Owens, a recurring face in the series. Unusually for Hughes the book is a bit of a plod, and it pulls up lame a furlong from home when he presents the reader with a huge dollop of tell, not show, which seriously compromises the ending. I like Hughes's writing and I like the series, but this one is the weakest to date and is treading water. With a bit of luck he'll be on firmer going the next time out.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, April 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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