The Anglo-Irish Murders - Hardcover

Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, studied at University College Dublin and Cambridge University, and now lives in London. A historian and prize-winning biographer, she has written seriously and/or frivolously for almost every national newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom since 1993, and appears frequently on radio and television in Ireland, the UK, and on the BBC World Service. Shortlisted for the John Creasey Award for the best first novel, she won the Last Laugh award for the funniest crime novel of the year in 2008 for Murdering Americans. www.ruthdudleyedwards.co.uk

A group of political activists on all sides of the British-Irish issue gathers for a conference and proceeds to air their imperialist and victimized views. Part way through the agenda, however, conferees begin to die, in apparently accidental, then certainly homicidal, ways. On paper, this book would be a certain sedative. In the hands of Bill Wallis, however, it comes alive. Wallis proves himself a master of several Irish and British dialects, as well as Hindu, Japanese, and Brooklynese. He also conveys, by the use of nuance and pacing, the personality quirks that define stereotypes and add depth to each character, right down to the waitress in the restaurant. Who cares what happens to these people? We might not like most of them, but we'd recognize them on the street in a second. R.P.L. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine