Ken Bruen: American Skin (UK 2008)

From the Publisher:
"IRELAND'S VERSION OF SCOTLAND'S IAN RANKIN." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"By turns hard-boiled, sentimental, and lurid, this is Irish novelist Bruen's enthralling valentine to America's heart of noir." Entertainment Weekly

"Ken Bruen's artfully violent and distinctly human voice is in full effect with American Skin. There are few crime novelists today who write with such passion and bravado." George Pelecanos

"A dark, hilarious nightmare of a book that stretches genres and concepts... This is a significant work loaded with memorable characters, electrifying incidents and walking nightmares. Very highly recommended." Bookreporter.com

"Irish author Bruen tells a story that's exquisitely circuitous. All the brooding characters wind up in Tucson. It's here that the mayhem reaches its climax but with plenty of guarantees it won't end there. In Skin, evil always has the upper hand." USA Today

"Ken Bruen's biggest, boldest, most sweeping and heartfelt novel yet." C. J. Box

"Noir master Bruen (The Guards) effortlessly moves his story line back and forth in time, all his trademark pop culture references in place, the banshee of existential agony wailing loud." Publishers Weekly

Ken Bruen: American Skin. Brandon, ISBN: 0863223796 (September, 2008), 281 p., £15.99.

Ken Bruen: American Skin (USA 2006)

From the Publisher:
Stephen Blake comes from a long line of Galway Blakes, a family famous in history - or infamous - for jettisoning its Catholic roots to save their land from the English. As a young man he was always happiest when drinking with his mates, and a ready hand in a fight. With no particular plans in mind, he went up to study at Trinity College, and immediately afterward "took the king's shilling" by joining the British army, and came out harder, leaner, and suspect in the eyes of his countrymen. Now nearly forty, he is a good man blown in bad directions. Out of misplaced loyalty he agrees to take part in an IRA bank heist. Doomed to failure from the start, it goes disastrously wrong when his friend is killed, and Stephen must leave Ireland, determined to reinvent himself as an American. Now he and girlfriend Siobhan, best friend Tommy, IRA terrorist Stapleton, and a particularly American sort of psychopath named Dade are all on a collision course somewhere on the road between the dive bars of New York and the pitiless desert of the Southwest.

Ken Bruen: American Skin. Kate's Mystery Books, ISBN: 1932112472 (October, 2006), 280 p., $24.95.