Irregulars

A Sean O'Keefe Mystery (Sean O'Keefe, Book 2)

By: Kevin McCarthy

Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds

"Irregulars is astounding. Kevin McCarthy is doing for Irish history what Dennis Lehane is doing for the history of Boston. Wonderfully written, tense, provocative and oh so highly entertaining. Shaping up to be the series of accessible Irish history. Cries out to be filmed." --Ken Bruen

Dublin, 1922: As civil war sets brother against brother and Free State and Republican death squads stalk the streets and back lanes of Dublin, demobbed RIC-man, Sean O’Keefe, takes a break from life as a whiskey-soaked waster to search for the missing son of one of Monto's most powerful brothel owners.

Hired to find the boy amid the tumult and terror of a country at war with itself, O’Keefe soon finds that the story is not as simple as it first seemed and that the truth can be hard to pin down.

The second book in the O’Keefe series, Irregulars explores a fascinating and complex period of Irish history.

©2013 by Kevin McCarthy. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Better than the first

So the first book started with a bit of an unusual premise. But this one, well. It’s a powerful story and I normally don’t use those words. It’s dark and not for a light read.

Great writing, great narration. Excellent all around.

It’s up there with Declare for one of the best Audiobooks ever

Historical Premise Great...Story? Not so Much.

There was much to like about this significant tale of a former cop (Peeler) in Post-WWI Ireland. Without getting bogged down in Irish history within in this review, let me say that the story makes an honest backdrop for the scenarios arising to make this a believable tale of Irish woe.

That said, the novel is cliche (big, bad, torturing brutes everywhere), dirty cops with shifting alliances (any way the wind blows), and main characters for whom a linear plot line is placed before the reader like Dorothy's Yellow Brick Road. Without an easy plot, I would have dropped these uninteresting characters like a boiled potato onto an Irish plate during the last famine. The story was so predictable as to evoke in me several ("Are you kidding me's").

I am not going to recommend this novel, though the first O' Keefe novel was spectacular. Why, you ask? It's because the novel has nothing to teach me, I don't like the characters, and (this is tragic), the ending is a mishmash of revenge killings and get-even gobsmacking that redeems no one, especially the readers.

I give this novel two Guinness down for the coal smoke it wafts into our eyes in a sentimental attempt to evoke Danny Boy's tears.