The Bloomsday Dead (Playaway Adult Fiction) [Preloaded Digital Audio Player]

Adrian McKinty (Author), Gerard Doyle (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2009 | Series: Playaway Adult Fiction

Michael Forsythe might be, as one of his assailants puts it, 'un-fucking-killable', but that doesn't seem to deter people from trying. He's living in Lima, reasonably well-hidden by the FBI's Witness Protection Program, but Bridget Callaghan, whose fiance he murdered twelve years ago, has an enduring wish to see him dead. So when her two goon assassins pass him the phone to speak to her before they kill him, Michael thinks she just wants to relish the moment. In fact, out of desperation, she is giving him a chance to redeem himself. All he has to do is return to Ireland and find her missing daughter. Before midnight.Tenacious and brutal, with the hunted man's instinct for trouble, Forsythe leaves a trail of mayhem as he tries to end the bloody feud once and for all. "The Bloomsday Dead" pulsates with break-neck action and wry literary references; McKinty's distinctly Irish voice packs a ferocious punch.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. McKinty finishes up his knockout trilogy featuring Irish mercenary Michael Forsythe with his most visceral, satisfying effort yet (after 2006's The Dead Yard). Perennial fugitive Forsythe has drifted to Lima, Peru, where he's grabbed by a couple of strong-arm men who force him at gunpoint to take a phone call. Bridget Callaghan, a former lover and the one-time fiancée of Irish-American mobster Darkey White (whom Forsythe killed), has finally tracked Forsythe down and offers a modest proposal: come to Belfast and find her 11-year-old daughter, Siobhan, who's gone missing, or take a bullet. Our man arrives in Dublin on June 16, when the city is overrun with Joyceans celebrating Bloomsday. Dodging various assassins, Forsythe makes his way up to Belfast. Back on his home turf, he sets out after the girl, apparently kidnapped by a fringe group of IRA paramilitaries. McKinty writes masterful action scenes, and he whips up a frenzy as the bullets begin to fly. Devotees of Irish literature will also appreciate the many allusions to Joyce's Ulysses.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Michael Forsythe is a virtuoso mayhem machine--except when it comes to handling his fatal attraction to Bridget Callaghan, the ex-girlfriend turned New York Irish Mob boss who's been trying to kill him for a decade. Fittingly, then, this final chapter in McKinty's Forsthe trilogy forces Michael to sort out his relationship with the fire-haired Bridget or die trying. After rousting him from a Peruvian hotel security gig in spectacular fashion, Bridget orders Michael to help rescue her adolescent daughter from kidnappers in Ireland. As literary luck would have it, he lands in Dublin on Bloomsday and sets off on a daylong journey to Belfast--although it's more path of destruction than Joycean deconstruction. While this novel outpaces immediate predecessor The Dead Yard (2006), it doesn't quite catch Dead I Well May Be (2003). But McKinty overcomes minor missteps--a key revelation tipped almost from the outset and a less-than-satisfying final scene--with his trademark dark lyricism, one great red herring, and a masterful plot twist that brings Forsythe's character full circle in a lightning flash. And Michael continues to play his insouciant hard-guy role with aplomb. "You know how much damage your skull will do to my gun if I pull this trigger at point-blank range?" he asks one inept crew leader. The answer: "None at all." Raise a glass; young Forsythe will be missed. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Preloaded Digital Audio Player
• Publisher: Playaway (September 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1433296225
• ISBN-13: 978-1433296222
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slainte, Mr. Forsythe!, May 14, 2007

By 

Gabriela Perez "Oy! So many books. . . ." (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Bloomsday Dead: A Novel (Hardcover)

In this, which the dust jacket says IS the last of the Forsythe series, Michael Forsythe is forced to return to Ireland in order to help the woman he fell in love with and whose fiance he killed in the first book of the series.

When we first see Forsythe in this one, he is in Peru, heading up security for a hotel. For a moment--just one brief one--it seems he may have found some peace after all, a place where he can use his skills but not in overtly violent ways. But then, and quickly, it all goes to pot, and Forsythe is given a choice: return to help me look for my daughter, or die after this conversation.

Forsythe returns for more than one reason. He wants to help Bridget find her daughter, who has been kidnapped. He wants to see Bridget again. He wants a chance at getting rid of the albatross he's had hanging around his neck for years: Bridget wants him dead, revenge for the fiance he killed in her presence all those years ago.

The hunt for Bridget's daughter takes up a big part of the book, of course, but so do other things equally enthralling. For one, Forsythe is MUCH more in tune with who he is in this book. In the first book, he was an angel of death who didn't really much twig to the fact that he trailed doom wherever he went. Now, though, he's very much aware of it. Very much prepared to go where that takes him. He hurts people, kills them, and loses very little sleep over it. He's never lost a lot of sleep, but now he loses none.

The tension between Forsythe and Bridget makes this novel stand out even more than the previous two. Forsythe seems to encounter people who want him dead or in incredible pain every few pages or so, and it's a wonder he can keep his head straight through all the beatings and chases. I must admit that at first I thought "he can't possible be upright after that kind of beating" and "he can't possibly be thinking straight after getting the crap kicked out of him" several times in this one, but one of the things that becomes clear here is how Forsythe compartmentalizes and uses pain to move forward.

All in all, this was a satisfying third novel. I will miss Mr. Forsythe, but the end of this one seems natural, not contrived.

Now--on to another McKinty (a non-Forsythe one)!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Harlequin does Bonnie and Clyde, March 13, 2007

By 

Deborah "Lover of good cops and robbers books... (SHALLOTTE, NC, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bloomsday Dead: A Novel (Hardcover)

Little spoiler bits alert...

I listened to this as an [...] download, as I had McKinty's previous books. Gerard Doyle continues to wear the skin of Michael Forsythe...he's amazing.

The first half of this book was vintage McKinty and it was wonderful. The conversation about Ulysses with a fellow plane passenger was hilarious; I was laughing out loud. The witty and sarcastic one-liners are very much in evidence, though some didn't seem as fresh this time around. Gerard Doyle even sounds older as he reads the older (but not much wiser) Michael. He's 40% of the magic of McKinty's books, IMHO. But by the second half, I had figured everything out. It was pretty plain what was going on, who the mystery person was, who Siobhan was, etc., but I still wanted to speed ahead to see if Michael makes it out alive. I was half-way hoping he'd go out in Bonnie and Clyde style, but instead, McKinty chooses to experiment with what would happen if Scorsese wrote a Harlequin romance. After it was over, I slumped in my chair and said, "What?! She's combing the kid's hair?!"

The wit, the lyrical language, the very graphic violence are the hallmarks of a McKinty book and they are fully evident here. Not as funny as the first book in the trilogy, not as bite-your-nails intense as the second book, but there were small chuckles throughout the book and a fair amount of pacing back and forth. The writing was just as beautiful. However, once Michael has his first conversation with Bridget, it's as if McKinty's mind was being pulled elsewhere and he just wrote to get it finished. Why did Michael not ask Slider who the boss was?

An unsatisfying end to the trilogy, but still some of the best books you'll ever read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great book by Adrian McKinty, August 16, 2008

By 

Robert J. Boyle "Bob Boyle" (Chesapeake, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bloomsday Dead: A Novel (Dead Trilogy) (Mass Market Paperback)

We were previously introduced to Michael Forsythe in "Dead I Well May Be" and "The Dead Yard". I would strongly recommend reading "Dead I Well May Be" before reading "The Bloomsday Dead", because there are a lot of references to (and plot twists involving) previous characters that will be better understood if you are familiar with these characters already.

"The Bloomsday Dead" is a highly entertaining novel, but in a slightly different way than the two previous Michael Forsythe books. This novel reads much like an episode of the television show "24", with plenty of fast paced action and numerous plot twists. But, as usual, Adrian McKinty adds a touch of poetry between action sequences, especially when describing the beautiful (and sometimes not so beautiful) scenery of his native Ireland. I found the conclusion of the novel to be a satisfying end for our hero (..I'm not sure if hero is the right word for him), but I wouldn't mind reading more about Michael Forsythe either, if given another chance.