Bloodland – Alan Glynn – My take.

Finally got around to reading Alan Glynn’s ‘BLOODLAND. Straght away let me say that it’s right up there with the best of them … and I don’t just mean in Ireland. Difficult enough start to the book – snippits of conversations, fragments of actions, subliminal insights into what’s to come, unclear … but teasing. With partial introduction to the various protagonists out of the way, the story proper takes off with a right old lash.

TV star, coke-addicted z-lister and tabloid staple, Susie Monaghan, is one of the people killed in a helicopter crash. Out of work journalist, Jimmy Gilroy, lands the job of writing Susie’s biography. But before he gets into the project he is persuaded by a former colleague to drop it. In its place he is given the opportunity to ghost write a former Taoiseach’s autobiography. Alan Glynn’s description of ex-Taoiseach Larry Bolger is simply delicious: an amalgam of Haughey/Reynolds/Ahern/Cowen all rolled into one – with whatever virtues they might have had taken out. Ineberiated, Bolger lets it slip to Jimmy that the helicopter crash was not the accident it was made out to be, the revelation setting the journalist in a complete new direction.

What follows involves all manner of intrigue and includes such diverse characters as a US senator with sights on the White House, the senator’s brother who is involved in a mining venture in war-torn Congo, a shadowy ex-military security contractor, a property developer on the verge of bankruptcy, and a UN official who, blinded by his lustful desire for Susie Monaghan, neglects his responsibilities.

If I have a quibble at all, it’s to do with how easily the journalist unravels the various aspects of what is a highly complex international conspiracy. The ruined developer, for instance, simply confesses his guilt and, for good measure, implicates several other players. Later, an ex-military security operator unaccountably volunteers to spill the beans to Gilmore about the lies, corruption, collusion and dirty tricks that link all guilty parties. OK, so I’m being pernickety, but such nit-picking pales into insignificance when put alongside what is undoubtly a tale of our times, one that casts a cold eye on the sub prime scandals, inept government, debt crisis, the Greek bailout, all in all a vast canvas, rendered in a gripping fictional format, and one that no doubt we’ll see up there on the silver screen before too long. Four stars

KT