Tag Archives: Bunny McGarry

Fiction, Reviews

‘Firewater Blues,’ by Caimh McDonnell

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As for the flat itself, whatever had gone on here, it was highly unlikely that the weapon used was a cat, as there was nowhere near enough room to swing one.

Caimh McDonnell’s series of comic mysteries featuring bibulous police detective Bunny McGarry can well be called ground-breaking, if only for its extension of the category “trilogy” to include a series that’s up to six books now (not to mention the “Bunny in America” side-series). The latest is Firewater Blues, and it’s as inventive and hilarious as all the others.

Nevertheless, I’m done with them. Reasons at the end of this review.

Firewater Blues is a sort of prequel, occurring before A Man With One of Those Faces, the first in the series. Bunny is still with the police force at this point, though on a “sabbatical.” He’s grown disillusioned with the force, and is considering a change.

Then he encounters Rosie Flint, a young woman he once helped out. Rosie is a computer genius and very obviously somewhere on the Autistic scale. Which means she absolutely refuses to have anything to do with the regular police, due to the way they treated her the last time around. But she trusts Bunny… sort of. She has a boyfriend now, and he’s disappeared. On top of that, she’s convinced somebody has been following her. Already agoraphic, she’s terrified of a world of dangers.

Bunny agrees to help, and begins uncovering disturbing clues. Something very big is going on, and poor Rosie is in the middle of it. Bunny will approach the case with his usual blunt object methodology, and many heads will get knocked together before – with the help of a pack of renegade nuns and a twelve-year-old truant – he finds the answers. Not all of them comforting.

Author McDonnell is a genius, and Firewater Blues combines slapstick, crude jokes, and clever wordsmithing with moments of genuine poignancy. This is an excellent, funny book, if you can handle the language.

However (at least for this reader) this is where the author finally came out so plainly with his politics that that element overcame the entertainment. There’s never been any question where Caimh McDonnell stood on the political spectrum, but (it seemed to me) he came out swinging this time. He even went so far as to trot out the old chestnut that “political correctness is just another name for politeness.” (Yeah, pull the other one. What could be more polite than calling everybody you disagree with Hitler?) I’m sure author McDonnell doesn’t want my conservative, fascist money anyway.

In any case, it’s stopped being fun and I’m done with it. But you may be more tolerant than I am. I can recommend it as a really funny, well-written book.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Man’s Sins,’ by Caimh McDonnell

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Marshall’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly without producing any words. It happened enough times that you could have stuck a light in there and used him to send Morse code messages to passing ships.

There are few pleasures in my reading life to match the appearance of a new Bunny McGarry novel. Caimh McDonnell’s comic mysteries started out hilarious, and they just seem to get better. The latest, Dead Man’s Sins, is officially Number 5 in the Dublin Trilogy, though it is in fact a sequel to the first prequel. But who’s counting? Certainly not the author.

Bunny McGarry is still a Dublin police detective at this point, but is taking a sabbatical from his job. He gets a call from the widow of his late partner, who depends on him for constant help and never shows any gratitude. Two tough guys have shown up at her house, claiming that their boss, Cooper Hannity (a prominent Dublin bookie), now owns the place. Bunny “sorts them out,” but soon learns the guys were legally in the right.

Hannity’s wife is Angelina, a former ballerina and model who was once a kid Bunny mentored on the mean city streets. But she’s no help in this matter, having no control over her overbearing, possessive husband. And when murder happens, Bunny finds himself in the middle of a very neat frame that not only threatens his own freedom, but some secrets he’s been keeping for other people.

What’s wonderful about this book – aside from the hilarious writing – is that McDonnell makes the most of his characters. They keep showing us surprising facets, and those facets make the whole story more profound. Yes, I said it – profound. There are moments of genuine depth here, and glimpses of moral vision.

In between a lot of brawling and cursing and slapstick, of course.

Though, to be fair, I must admit I figured out the culprit.

Nonetheless, I really loved Dead Man’s Sins. Highly recommended, with cautions (mostly) for language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Quiet Man,’ by Caimh McDonnell

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bloody Christmas,’ by Caimh McDonnell

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Caimh McDonnell’s series of comic Irish mysteries, most featuring big, drunken detective Bunny McGarry, has been one of the delights of my recent reading life. Bloody Christmas, which fits into the series, is a special edition novella, available only until Christmas. Its sales support an Irish charity for the homeless.

Bloody Christmas is set way back near the start, just after the end of A Man With One of Those Faces. Bunny has been undergoing psychological evaluation after throwing a senior officer off a building, something he finds annoying and unreasonable. But now he’s managed to get his sanity officially verified, and is celebrating in his favorite pub, when a man tries to assassinate him in the men’s room.

Instead of beating the man bloody, however, Bunny listens to his tale of woe. The man (who’s there with his pregnant wife, named Mary [very subtle]), is the victim of criminals who’ve kidnapped their son. Well, it’s Christmas, a time for good works. Bunny has a few ideas on how to find the boy, and he puts a plan into motion.

It’s all completely implausible, and completely hilarious. Bunny is at his profane, selectively brutal best, and I laughed out loud more than once as he cuts a swathe through the underworld he understands so well. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to tell you that it all turns out more perfectly than anything has a right to in this naughty world.

Highly recommended, with cautions for adult themes and profanity.

Fiction, Reviews

‘I Have Sinned,’ by Caimh McDonnell

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He had always been a deceptively good athlete, in the sense that, to look at him, you wouldn’t have thought he was any kind of an athlete at all.

Bless me Father, I loved this book. Loved it to death. I’ve enjoyed all Caimh McDonnell’s novels, but this one was a special delight.

If you haven’t been following the series, fat old drunken Bunny McGarry, former Dublin policeman, is thought by his Irish friends to be dead. He is not. Instead, he’s in the United States on a personal mission. The love of his life is living in hiding, protected by a shadowy, renegade order of nuns called the Sisters of the Saint. He needs to contact her and warn her about something. As I Have Sinned begins, he has learned the name of a man who might be able to put him in touch with those women. But that’s another challenge. The man is Father Gabriel de Marcos, a priest in a New York ghetto neighborhood. Father Gabriel has no time for Irishmen on missions – he’s trying to save a few of the kids in his flock from the trap of gangster life – a girl who can box, a boy who can paint, a young man with a gift for words.

But Bunny stubbornly insists on sticking around until Father Gabriel can help him. Bunny can even help with coaching the kids in the church gym. Reluctantly, Father Gabriel lets him move in as a type of assistant priest –a tough gig for Bunny, devoted as he is to getting drunk and cursing. Gang leaders are threatening Father Gabriel, accusing him of stealing “their” people. But the priest insists he has no need of Bunny’s  protection.

And it’s almost true. Father Gabriel has secrets, and a history. A history that’s catching up with him.

It all comes together in a farcical explosion of improbable action, slapstick, and genuine heroism and grace.

What I loved most about I Have Sinned was that along with exciting fights and witty writing, there was genuine goodness and sweetness here. Father Gabriel is a tremendous hero, a sincere man of God, loving his neighbor and struggling to redeem his past (I could quibble that he has a poor understanding of grace, but what do you expect from a Catholic?). I was charmed even while I laughed. You’d have to go far to find a more positive portrayal of a man of God in any novel.

Nevertheless, you need to be prepared for lots of foul language. But other than that, I highly recommend I Have Sinned. You’ll probably want to read the rest of the books first, though.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Disaster Inc.’ by Caimh McDonnell

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Disaster Inc.

Still, the Victory had a colourful history, even by the standards of New York, where any hotel worthy of the name collects incidents of infamy just by existing in the city that doesn’t sleep – or if it does, it sleeps with someone else’s partner.

Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy series has come completely loose from its moorings. The trilogy is done, but the characters continue in further adventures, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Because they’re so much fun.

In Disaster Inc., the first book of a new series, we are reunited with big, bibulous Bunny McGarry, former Dublin policeman. Officially he’s dead and buried, but in fact he’s been transported to the United States by a shadowy group possibly connected to the CIA. They’ve equipped him with a debit card and an indestructible cell phone, to facilitate his search for the love of his life. She’s a jazz singer named Simone, and has lived her life on the run from other shadowy agents, because she “knows too much.”

Unfortunately for Bunny, as the book starts he’s eating an unsatisfactory breakfast in a roadside diner, having been robbed of his rucksack, which contained the card and the phone, during a drunken binge. As he’s pondering his next move a pair of masked gunmen invade the diner, announcing that this is a robbery. Bunny immediately identifies them as amateurs, and neutralizes them. Then he beelines for the door, because he’s in the US illegally and he’d rather not explain himself to the police.

But a car pulls up in front of him on the highway. Inside is a woman who was also in the diner. The robbers, she says, were actually there to kill her. She, too, “knows too much.” If Bunny can come to New York and help her get out of her problem, she’ll pay him a lot of money. After some hesitation, Bunny accepts, figuring he can find whoever stole his rucksack at the same time.

Which kicks off a highly improbable, but extremely enjoyable, adventure. McDonnell’s trademark wit is well in evidence, though I found a couple editorial errors – a wrong word choice and a confusion of attributions in a stretch of dialogue.

But still it was a lot of fun, and I recommend it – if you can handle the obscenities.