{"id":3995,"date":"2015-02-10T07:42:40","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T12:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3995"},"modified":"2015-02-10T07:42:40","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T12:42:40","slug":"dead-i-well-may-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3995","title":{"rendered":"****Dead I Well May Be"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mexico,

(photo: Eneas De Troya, Creative Commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Adrian McKinty, read by Gerard Doyle<\/a>. You\u2019ll recognize the title of this 2003 crime novel as a line in that quintessential Irish song, \u201cDanny Boy,\u201d but nothing about this book is clich\u00e9. Last year I read and enjoyed my first McKinty, In the Cold, Cold Ground<\/em><\/a>, and this one is equally engaging. Both books were the first in a series, and I\u2019ll hope to read the full sets.<\/p>\n

Protagonist Michael Forsythe is very much a bad boy who reluctantly leaves Ireland to settle in New York City during the violent, drug-ridden 1980s. There he joins a gang of Irish thugs and makes the unpardonable error of bedding the gang-leader\u2019s girlfriend. But he\u2019s not merely a violent man, he\u2019s an intelligent and erudite charmer, too, with hilarious and spot-on observations about American life and his fellow criminals. To say that things don\u2019t go well for him here in the U.S. of A. is an understatement, but Michael can think rings around his confederates and he skillfully manipulates and dodges the politics of violence between Irish and Dominican gangs. Only once does he let his guard down and travels to a chancy Mexican rendezvous with his pals, and . . .<\/p>\n

McKinty establishes a lively pace and an engaging narrator, who kept my sympathies, even when he does one of those things I really wish he hadn\u2019t. Narrator Gerard Doyle<\/a> is a genius.
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