The Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Betrayal [Hardcover]

Declan Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2006

'The night of my mother's funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband. Now she was lying dead on her living room floor, and the howl of a police siren echoed through the surrounding hills ...' Ed Loy hasn't been back to Dublin for twenty years. But his mother has died, and he has returned home to bury her. Loy soon realizes that the world waiting for him is very different from the one he left behind all those years ago. When an old school friend asks him to investigate the disappearance of her husband, Loy reluctantly agrees. And suddenly in this place where he grew up -- among the Georgian houses, Victorian castles, and modern villas of Castlehill -- Loy finds himself thrown into a world of organized crime, long-hidden secrets, corruption and murder.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this overly busy and bloody crime thriller from Irish playwright Hughes (Shiver), Edward Loy, an Irish PI transplanted to L.A., returns home to Dublin for his mother's funeral. A friend's request to locate her missing husband puts Loy on a trail that leads to a corpse found within the foundations of the city's town hall, a notorious family of brothers who head an organized crime ring, heroin funding, numerous murders, possible IRA involvement and much more. When the pace momentarily slackens, the author supplies some nicely observed pastoral views of Dublin and the Irish countryside, but the ongoing cacophony of violence deafens one to all but the most sanguinary details. Hughes has talent, but this caper, his first, doesn't whet one's appetite for more of the same. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

PI Edward Loy returns to Ireland from California to bury his mother and lands himself in a knotty thicket of iniquity, as the Irish real-estate boom unearths old corpses and creates a few new ones. Retained by a profligate lady friend to find her missing husband, Loy wades into the labyrinthine dealings of two conspicuous families, the land--developing Dawsons and the drug-dealing Halligans, who may have more in common than either would like to admit. Loy is the sort of brash PI who would as soon use his head for inflicting blunt-force trauma as for cogitation. Hughes lacks his countryman Ken Bruen's knack for making such feral types compelling, and his fine turn of phrase is marred by a proclivity for long expository speeches. On the other hand, he vividly conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of the Dublin streets. He's clearly a cut or two below such gritty Irish bards as Bruen, John Connolly, and Adrian McKinty, but he bears watching. David Wright
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (February 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060825464
• ISBN-13: 978-0060825461
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,489,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Declan Hughes is the author of the Ed Loy PI series: The Wrong Kind of Blood; The Colour of Blood; The Price of Blood/The Dying Breed; and All The Dead Voices. His books have been nominated for the Edgar, CWA New Blood Dagger, Shamus, Macavity and Theakston's Old Peculier awards, and The Wrong Kind of Blood won the Shamus for Best First PI Novel. Declan is also an award-winning playwright, and the co-founder and former artistic director of Dublin's Rough Magic Theatre Company. His latest novel is called City of Lost Girls.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb start to a new series!, April 10, 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 Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Suspense (Ed Loy PI) (Mass Market Paperback)

I bought this book primarily because one of my favorite authors, John Connolly, indicated in his blog that he had read a novel by this author. I looked up the information on Amazon and ordered the book. I love to read mysteries whose protagonists are situated in foreign countries because I like to get a feel for those locations.

This novel, the first in a series that so far numbers two books, is absolutely superb.

Tom Loy is back in Ireland after a 20 year absence, back to handle affairs after his mother's death. His return is not without all sorts of challenges, the main ones being his buried resentment and bewilderment over his father's disappearance and his mother's sexual relationship with another man shortly after that disappearance.

He is asked to look for the spouse of a woman he becomes involved with, and as a result of that search, he encounters people from his past, people who connect him once more to the country he left behind in order to disappear and reinvent himself in Los Angeles.

The strength of the novel lie in the excellent dialogue, complete with Irish-isms that bring that country to life through language; the solid development of the main characters (not just Loy, but his friend David, and various other characters who are extremely necessary to Loy's personal development and to the movement of the plot), and the strong narrative.

Excellent! I plan to buy the second installment as soon as payday rolls around!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good beginning, October 20, 2006

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Betrayal (Hardcover)

Private Investigator Ed Loy left his native Ireland 20 years ago. Now he is back to bury his mother and still wonders what happened to his father, who had disappeared many years before. Ed is asked by one former classmate to find her missing husband and another childhood friend turns up on Ed's doorstep with a recently fired gun, given into his care by a local mobster, he asks Ed to hide it. Soon Ed is immersed in bodies and a determination to unravel the secrets which started many years ago.

Definitely noir with lots of brutality and a few too many threads, but a very good debut nonetheless. I appreciated that Hughes tied up all the threads in a very satisfying way. Ed is an interesting character who was fleshed out quite well. The story was well paced but what stuck me most was the underlying that sometimes family is more than blood. It's not a perfect book, but good enough that I am looking forward to Hughes' next book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing Story of Loss and Redemption, July 13, 2008

By 

Debra Purdy Kong "Author of Casey Holland Tra... (British Columbia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Suspense (Ed Loy PI) (Mass Market Paperback)

Having left his hometown of Dublin for Los Angeles twenty years ago, P.I. Edward Loy has returned for his mother's funeral. The trip's brought back painful memories, including his father's disappearance before Ed left Dublin. It's also brought back a former schoolmate who wants Ed to find her missing husband, and an old friend who wants Ed to hide a gun for him. As Ed peels back layer after layer of lies and deception, he battles gangsters, lots of people with secrets, and his own past.

With a strong theme about things and people gone lost, in a variety of ways, THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD is a compelling, somewhat melancholy story about coming to terms with what can't be changed. Entwined with Ed's story are the changes Dublin has undergone over two decades. Author, Declan Hughes, does a wonderful job of describing the Dublin that Ed remembers and the sanitized mall-fest he sees now. I almost felt as sorry for Dublin sites as I did for Ed.

For a while, the increasing body count seemed a little far-fetched. But the more I learned about the area Ed grew up in, the more believable it was to read about folks solving problems through bloodshed. The gangsters are fairly run-of-the-mill thugs, yet other characters are well-rounded. Hughes takes his time tying up the novel's many threads to create a satisfying ending. THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD is one heck of an absorbing read. Enjoy.