Brouhaha

Product Information

The actor and comedian Ardal O’Hanlon’s first novel, 1998’s The Talk of the Town , hinted at the emergence of a distinctive literary talent, equal parts Flann O’Brien and Irvine Welsh. Having the gift of the gab, also allows the country to produce is fair share of comedians, without the ability to prattle on for ages in front of an audience, you’d be like a certain French clown. The political intrigue, which also abounds through book is handled deftly considering the minefield it was back during the tenuous early days following the Good Friday agreement.

One feature of the novel which is exceptionally good is that, as a crime thriller, it has to have a solution; but here there is a solution but no closure. They include an influential local politician who used to be the local bully, a retired policeman turned soccer coach and a folksy doctor who drives like a maniac. Ah, if only one could "put on" - like a favourite t-shirt - the background knowledge required to get this wonderful book up and running! Three main characters are determined to find the truth: Kevin, a retired Garda who was part of the team that originally investigated her disappearance, Philip who was Dove’s best friend and Joanne a local journalist. As for the group of boyhood friends surrounding Philip, the like of them can be seen hanging around on street corners in any town, anywhere in the world.There is a fair bit of violence and abuse in the book, and while not gratuitous (or horribly graphic), it is something I can usually do without. This has the bones of a cracking literary thriller with heavyweight crime story credentials, but it also has a surreal quality to it in the way the very darkest kind of humour ties everything together. Our third main protagonist is Kevin, a retired Garda whose life has been haunted by a young girl's disappearance. Throughout the novel I often found myself smiling wryly at the quirkiness of it all, even in the bleakest of moments, and this somehow lightens the whole piece even though the storyline is filled with poignancy.

Like a traveller who enjoys the journey as much as reaching their destination, I was in no hurry to reach the end and unravel the central mystery, content to savour each word, each sentence, each paragraph and each chapter of this captivating book. I got round it by imagining him reading it out loud, so it helped to be familiar with his tv persona. This was a struggle from the beginning up to the point where I collapsed from exhaustion and skipped to the end.The only novel by a comedian that I remember as being something other than a cash-in was Steve Martin’s The Pleasure Of My Company, a weird, surrealism-inflected novel about a man who has finally won the “Most Average American” competition. The plotting was noticeably first rate, with droplets of information into proceedings and then tidied up efficiently later on in the story. As well as the strange graphic novel Dove left behind and the more importantly about Sandra Mohan, who mysteriously disappeared a decade ago. These three intrepid individuals lead us through a myriad of scenarios, some very funny, some gruesome but all highly entertaining.