All the Dead Voices (Ed Loy Series #4)

Good Book, worth the price

Hughes writes a good book. Well developed characters, good visualization and sound dialog. This book reads well and held my interest. I won't give you any plot spoilers, but some of the situations do have a whiff of being contrived.
And the plot, mercy me. Hughes can't seem to restrain himself when it comes to throwing in subplots, there must be ten in this novel. All interesting, but in the final analysis it makes it difficult to follow as he ties up all the loose strings.
Buy the book, you won't regret it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

As good as Ken Bruen

without the total self destructiveness of his characters. Each novel gets better than the previous one.

DUBLIN BASED THRILLER INTRIGUES

This well told tale casting light on the dark side of Dublin both startles and intrigues. All the Dead Voices rings with tough authenticity; it is Irish crime fiction at its best. After some 20 years in the theater as both director and playwright Hughes turned to fiction and created Dublin based thrillers, which brought him not only a host of readers but a Shamus Award as well.

Private investigator Ed Loy is one of his most absorbing creations. Loy is, as he sees himself in All The Dead Voices, a man with "dead eyes telling me that my race was run, that there was nothing new under the sun except the next job of work, the next faithless woman, the next empty glass."

Well, his next job of work is rife with complexities and challenges. He's approached by a woman, Anne Fogarty, to find her father's real killer - a murder that was committed 15 years ago. She believes the police found the wrong man guilty. Steve Owen who was having an affair with Anne's mother was sent to prison and then released following an appeal. Anne has her own trio of suspects.

At the same time Loy is investigating the death of a soccer star, Paul Delaney, who may or may not have been selling heroin. As it turns out Delaney may also have been connected to one of the men Anne suspects of killing her father. It's quite one thing to solve a recent killing but another when one must dig into the past for answers.

Once again Declan Hughes has penned a compelling, plot and character driven narrative that's hard to put down.

- Gail Cooke

The latest Ed Loy Ireland investigative thriller a fast-paced violent tale

In Dublin, Anne Fogarty hires private investigator Ed Loy to investigate the cold case brutal beating death of her father in 1991 though the Garda has a suspect. Her mother's boyfriend was convicted of the crime, but freed when his lawyer's appealed the conviction. Though Ed is already busy looking into the murder of rising Sherbourne football star Paul Delaney whose death appears tied to drugs, he accepts Fogarty's case.

Loy finds out Anne's father was a tax inspector who was investigating three men (Bobby Doyle, Jack Cullen, and Georges Halligan) on potential income tax evasion. Each was IRA; thus they had means and opportunity besides the obvious motive. However, Loy is caught unaware when his two cases seem to converge as Delaney apparently had ties to Cullen.

The latest Ed Loy Ireland investigative thriller (see THE PRICE OF BLOOD, THE COLOR OF BLOOD, and THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD) is a fast-paced violent tale that may have left blood out of the title, but not the narrative. The inquiry is top rate providing an insight into the Troubles and its aftermath. Ed is his usual self - getting beaten, battered and bruised while working both cases. ALL THE DEAD VOICES is a terrific Irish whodunit.

Harriet Klausner

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