Customer Reviews

Fallon's Wake

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I would hesitate calling Mr Eickhoff a genius, but "Fallon's Wake" is a brilliant story, complexing, yet simple in its understanding of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. As a resident of Belfast, I can say that if Mr Eickhoff is not a resident of the country, then he has an uncanny gift for climbing inside of individuals and becoming them. Given the tenacity and ferocity of Fallon, I'm not certain that I would want to meet the author of "Fallon's Week" as an adversary on some dark night. This is one of the best novels I have ever read by anyone about the situation here in Northern Ireland, Irish, American, or English. If not an Irishman, he should be!

Truth be told, I couldn't put the book down, but that doesn't translate into a well developed novel at all. Eickhoff took an interesting period of very modern history (ending of the "Troubles") in Ireland, added some older and tired IRA operatives, drugs/America/CIA connections, and created a book based on an old theme: "tired gunslinger wanting to retire, but they won't let him". True to form, there's plenty of action and that's what kept my attention. Eickhoff can write interestingly.

Unfortunately, there are too many characters and very little real character development. There are too many intertwined subplots - nothing that would surprise spy story readers, though. He got sidtracked in trying to develop a surprising ending and ended up with nothing new, nothing surprising, and less than meets the eye.

I would like to meet this novelist in a less complex, but better developed opus and see what he makes of that. I'm sure he would do well with it. Fallon's Wake is worth reading as escape and entertainment, but not when you want something you can remember the next day.