All the Dead Voices (Ed Loy Series #4)

by Declan Hughes

Overview

PI Ed Loy wants to escape his past—but it won't be easy. Soon after moving to a Dublin apartment from his childhood home on the city's outskirts, he's approached by Anne Fogarty, whose father was murdered fifteen years ago. Anne thinks the police nabbed the wrong person, and the three most likely culprits are two ex-IRA men and George Halligan—Loy's underworld nemesis. Jack Cullen, one of the other suspects, may somehow be connected with the death of a rising soccer star—another case Loy is asked to take on. And as his two investigations collide, Loy finds himself in grave danger in a city divided—where the wounded Celtic Tiger walks hand in hand with the ghosts of a violent past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061689895
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/16/2010
Series:	Ed Loy Novels , #4
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	849,417
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

An award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Declan Hughes is cofounder and former artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company. He was Writer-in-Association with the Abbey Theatre and lives in Dublin with his wife and two daughters.

Editorial Reviews

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. (July)

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Publishers Weekly

Irish P.I. Ed Loy's dark and violent past continues to haunt him in this fourth book in Hughes's noir series (e.g., Wrong Kind of Blood). While investigating the death of a young soccer star with possible drug connections, Ed is contacted by Ann Fogerty to investigate her father's murder. Ann believes that the current suspect is the wrong guy and that the police are sandbagging her. Now Ed must renew unsavory contacts from his youth with violent IRA connections. The three men with both motive and means to kill Ann's father walk a fine line between respectability and villainy; one is well connected to the soccer circuit. Violence erupts-Ireland is a small place where investigation is a delicate and sometimes deadly matter-and suddenly Ed's two cases are on a collision course. Hughes's Ireland is tough, gritty, and filled with economic, political, and moral conflict. His characters are sharply drawn and deeply flawed. The growing audience for Ken Bruen, Tania French, Benjamin Black, and other authors of Irish noir will love it! [See Prepub Mystery, LJ3/1/09.]
—Susan Clifford Braun

Library Journal

Private investigator Ed Loy (The Price of Blood, 2008, etc.) must crack a case the Garda say they cracked 18 years ago. Anne Fogarty has the kind of weathered loveliness that's catnip to the likes of Ed. What she tells him the day she walks into his Dublin office is attention-getting as well. "My father was murdered in l991," she says, then adds that the wrong man was convicted for Brian Fogarty's murder. The real killer, currently walking free, is one of three men, she concludes, furnishing Ed with a list. Among those she fingers is Jack Cullen, racketeer, drug lord and central figure in the murder of young soccer star Paul Delaney, which happens to be the other case Ed is deeply involved in. True, no one has hired him to look into Paul's death, but for a certain kind of shamus that scarcely matters. Paul's older brother Dessie had asked him, friend to friend, to keep an eye on the kid, and though no one's throwing blame around, Ed characteristically reaches out for some. "He died on my watch," he tells Dessie. Was young Paul dealing drugs under Jack's auspices? And just how fraught was the connection between Cullen and Anne's dead father? An often bruised and battered Ed soon acknowledges that not everyone wants these questions answered. An overcomplicated plot redeemed by first-class writing.

Kirkus Reviews

Ed Loy returns from years of living in the U.S. in this Dublin “noir.” At the request of a beautiful woman, he takes on a fifteen-year-old murder case, which involves the IRA, Brits, and police, who all contribute to muddying the clues. Hughes peppers the story with hilarious witticisms about Irish-Americans. They chose the New World without leaving behind the Old, he says, and then mercilessly mocks this stereotype. The violent story borders on melodrama and is filled with vulgar language, and Stanley Townsend delivers it without pulling any punches. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as listening to Townsend is like being regaled with tales of machismo by the guy on the next bar stool. Best of all, there’s a TOTALLY unexpected conclusion. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2010 - AudioFile