The midday heat was quite something. It hit Bunny like a punch in the solar plexus. Nevada temperatures were the kind you only experienced in Ireland when they were cooking instructions.
The Bunny McGarry Stateside series (a spin-off of Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy) rolls along with a brand-new entry, The Quiet Man. And sorry, this story has no connection to the famous John Ford movie, except for the presence of a heavy-drinking, pugnacious Irishman.
The background, if you haven’t read the previous books, is a little complicated. Bunny McGarry, former Dublin police detective, is now officially dead. He has come to the US on a private quest to locate Simone, the love of his life. She disappeared entirely some years ago in order to escape some dangerous people who were looking for her. But now Bunny has learned of a credible threat to her safety of which she needs to be warned. To locate her, he has formed an alliance with the Sisters of the Saint, an unofficial order of “nuns” who are not necessarily religious (or celibate), but who have banded together to fight evil. Sort of a female A-Team with a mother superior. One of their members may know where Simone is, but she and another sister have been kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel. The cartel’s price for their release is that the Sisters find a way to spring one of their members (the titular Quiet Man) from a super-high security prison in Nevada.
Got that?
Bunny, always game, agrees to get himself arrested, and the Sisters’ resident internet hacker manages to get him placed in The Quiet Man’s cell. The Quiet Man is a mysterious prisoner, very large and strong, who never leaves the cell without a Hannibal Lecter mask, and to whom everyone is forbidden to speak. All Bunny has to do is persuade him to come along when the Sisters disrupt prison security. And, incidentally, stay alive while being threatened by various prison gangs, an old enemy who unexpectedly appears, and a homicidal chief guard. And, oh yes, survive in a place where they think a biscuit is what Bunny calls a scone.
I didn’t think The Quiet Man was quite as funny as the previous books (which may be only a trick of memory), but it was an engaging light thriller, and there were a lot of amusing moments and a neat resolution. I recommend it, if you can handle the rough language and “earthy” humor.