Sad Bastard

Secker & Warburg, 1998. Paperback. Used: Acceptable. Paperback in good condition, slight lean to spine. 1990 Secker & Warburg edition. "Coyne's son, destined to be another "headbanger", like his father, is the prime suspect when a dead body washes up on the docks. Coyne's estranged wife holds him responsible and it's up to him to sort things out and put the whole world to rights at the same time if he can manage it ... Funny, neatly observed and unusually warming" Time Out. "Coyne is a great fictional original, with his hatred of the garish aspects of the "new Ireland", his bizarre obsessions, his quixotic compulsion to do something useless; if you don't feel to some degree that he's a kindred spirit, you're probably excessively normal. There are serious and melancholy undercurrents here, but Sad Bastard is still the funniest Irish novel for a long time" Sunday Independent. "From the moment when Coyne opened his mouth to deliver some oracular pronouncement or other on "Irishness" it became clear that here was a terrific creation: volatile, ruminative, uxorious, a kind of Clint Eastwood-style avenger with a mission ... There was a precise, filmic quality to Headbanger's incidental detail and stage directions ... Its sequel follows a similar path. Sharp writing abounds ... this is splendid stuff" Literary Review. "The writing is very fine throughout the book ... the sense of place and the dynamics of these little lives are wonderfully vivid" Independent on Sunday. "Sad Bastard... makes strong play with character and local mood in a rock solid thriller structure ... Hamilton knows his business" Sunday Times. . Fiction. 0-436-20490-8.