Imprint: No Exit Press

Category: Classic crime and mystery fiction

Headbanger/Sad Bastard

Hugo Hamilton

Headbanger – Pat Coyne is a Dublin policeman passionately devoted to sorting out the world and its problems. For Coyne, cars, crime, pollution and golf are all ominous signs of a disintegrating society. The world is committing suicide, with MTV droning in the background. Coyne’s principal mission is to deal with crime, Ireland’s biggest growth industry. Though only a beat cop, he decides to take on the notorious gang leader, Drummer Cunningham. When a murder investigation leaves detectives clueless, he enters into a personal feud with the underworld, with disastrous consequences for himself and his family. Coyne is a Dublin Dirty Harry for whom everything begins to go wrong.

Sad Bastard – Garda Pat Coyne – aka ‘Mr Suicide’ is back. Injured in the line of duty and out of work with too much time on his hands, he’s become more obsessive and volatile, developing a fetish for women’s knickers. When a body washes up on the docks, the prime suspect is none other than the former Garda’s son, Jimmy. Both Coynes are notorious for their sweeping spells of self-destruction, but while Pat’s motives lean toward cleaning up the world’s messes, Jimmy possesses a taste for mayhem. Coyne’s estranged wife blames him, his mother-in-law berates him, and his therapist labels him psychotic. But when two criminal thugs try to kill his boy, Coyne decides that it’s up to him to straighten things out.

Paperback

RRP: £12.99

ISBN: 9781843449010

Published: March 23, 2017

Extent: 352 pages

Reviews

‘Hamilton is a great international writer who just happens to be Irish’

Anne Enright

‘Hugo Hamilton brings an earthy, dark giddiness to this twofer featuring a pair of his most beloved novels’

Kevin Burton Smith , Mystery Scene

[In Headbanger] Hamilton turns the collapse of the hero’s world into a nail-biting finish

Edward McBride , Times Literary Supplement

‘Coyne is a majestic creation… If Flann O’Brien’s lunatic Professor De Selby had genetically engineered a cross between the novels of Raymond Chandler and those of Patrick McCabe, this is what the progeny might well have looked like’

Antonia Logue , Times

[In Sad Bastard] Hamilton’s style is an engaging mix of the salty and literary, and he has fun with the cartoonish tropes of pulp fiction, but the predictable mystery comes a distant second to his vivid characters

Sia Michel , New York Times

Hugo Hamilton

Starting out as a journalist, Hugo Hamilton went on to write short stories and novels. He is now the author of six novels, two memoirs and a collection of short stories. His work has won a number of international awards, including the 1992 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2003 French Prix Femina Etranger, the 2004 Italian Premio Giuseppe Berto and a DAAD scholarship in Berlin. He has also worked as a writer-in-residence at Trinity College, Dublin. Hamilton was born and lives in Dublin.

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