Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Crime and romance: a deadly combination, 15 April 2007
A lightning-witted, action-packed caper from second-time Irish novelist Declan Burke, The Big O is ostensibly about a tiger kidnapping gone wrong. However, it also manages to capture the brink-of-the-abyss finality of falling in love along the way very well, with lots of black humour and quirky, loveable characters thrown into the mix. There's Karen, a ballsy plastic surgeon's receptionist, who pulls stick-ups on garages in her down-time; her boss, Frank, who's getting his ex-wife Madge kidnapped in order to collect on the insurance; Karen's psycho ex Rossi, who's just out of prison; and her new love interest Ray, who's a painter/decorator cum 'babysitter'. A multi-layered novel that zips along at a rate of knots,with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The CSNI Verdict, 23 Sep 2008
Declan Burke's writing has earned recognition and praise from the likes of John Connolly, Ken Bruen and Adrian McKinty, and no doubt it will garner more when The Blue Orange is released by Harcourt in the near future. So I cracked open Declan Burke's The Big O with pretty high expectations. It is, after all, the work of a crime connoisseur. Burke runs the popular Irish crime fiction-focused blog, Crime Always Pays, and knows more than a thing or two about the genre. So has all his virtual rubbing-of-elbows with crime fiction's elite paid off? In a word, yes.
In The Big O, the cool and sexy Karen meets Ray, a mysterious Morrissey lookalike, while she's sticking up a convenience store. She invites him for a drink and it's not long before she finds out that there's a lot more to this guy with the dodgy fringe than meets the eye. Could be they could work together on a pretty big score. So long as they don't let a little thing like love get in the way. Unfortunately, Karen's ex-boyfriend, Rossi, is getting out of jail and he wants his Ducatti, his .44 Magnum and his sixty grand back. Things are about to get... complicated.
The Big O is a furiously-paced crime caper employing a huge cast and shifting character perspective. The novel is chockfull of Hiaasen-esque humour and there's a distinct lack of 2D bit-players. The plot is great fun, but on a slightly negative note, relies heavily on coincidence. However, as a reader, I enjoyed myself so much that I was more than happy to accept it.
What struck me most was Burke's skill at painting very believable female characters. I'm no expert myself, but the bits I read out to my wife met with a nod of approval. You couldn't say fairer than that, could you? Burke has taken the effort to present us with a female protagonist that isn't just a perky pair of boobs and a few witty double-entendres. Karen, Madge and Doyle are three very real ladies with very real strengths and... not exactly weaknesses... idiosyncrasies, maybe?
The format makes the book a perfect candidate for newspaper serialisation. Reading it, I was reminded of Bateman's I Predict a Riot. The story is told in bite-sized chapterttes that are conveniently labelled by the character driving the POV. In the early stages of the novel, this structure makes it a bit difficult to connect with the characters, but twenty-odd pages in, the aul brain gets into the swing of it and the sheer fun of the story and character-development fairly carries you along.
As a setting, Burke decided to go with Anywhere USA/UK/Ireland, with, in my mind, leanings towards the States. Knowing his penchant for the Irish crime scene I was expecting the novel to be set on the Emerald Isle with all sorts of wittiness smacking of blarney. However, this shrewd move may have contributed towards his securing a US publication deal, so more power to his elbow.
The Big O is a fun-filled and intense joyride that'll dump you on the kerb way too soon. The humour's great, but there's a lot of poignancy too, so don't sink too far into that sense of security. Burke whips it out from under the reader ruthlessly as he persuades you to feel sorry for the bad guys but shows them no mercy throughout to keep `em mean. The dialogue is wicked and the prose slick and stylish. This man's going to go a long way.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Hardboiled Irish fun, 21 Sep 2007
Irish crime is quite new to me, but this book has everything a crime reader could ask for. Above all The Big O is very funny, and it's a refreshing change to have crime writing without lots of gruesome murders. Attempted kidnapping does just as well, and Declan Burke's characters are a charming bunch of anything but stereotypical individuals.
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by Declan Burke
by Brian McGilloway
by Ken Bruen
by Philip Kerr
by Adrian McKinty
