All the Dead Voices

May 25, 2009
In Shamus-winner Hughes's solid fourth crime thriller to feature Dublin PI Ed Loy (after The Price of Blood
), Anne Fogarty hires Loy to re-examine the facts surrounding her father's unsolved murder in 1991—her mother's boyfriend was found guilty but later released on appeal for the fatal beating. Loy has a second murder to look into after Paul Delaney, a promising footballer on whom Loy was keeping unofficial tabs, is gunned down. The PI learns that Anne's father, a tax inspector, had prepared informal dossiers on three men he believed to be evading taxes and, not coincidentally, members of the IRA. One of the men is a Dublin gangster with ties to the IRA who may have been grooming Paul as a protégé. While U.S. readers unschooled with the particulars of the Troubles may have difficulty differentiating the IRA from the less familiar INLA (Irish National Liberation Army), Hughes's ear for dialogue and his liberal—but never gratuitous—use of violence make for an intense read.