The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton [Hardcover]

"searingly funny... Though his familiar caustic tones and honest dealings with the utterly seamy are present throughout, the lampooning of academia sometimes dominates to uproarious effect... He is one of Ireland's major talents abroad, and his continued blending of native writing talent with an acquired devotion to the entertainment value of American popular fiction is impressively single-minded.

Readers can turn the pages of E Robert Pendleton's secret life in equal anticipation of well-plotted thrillers, of the accessible seriousness Collins's fiction has always displayed, and of a good hoot at the literary world's wrangles." (JOHN KENNY IRISH TIMES )

"Collins has always written about the darker forces underlying everyday situations and this novel is no exception. Each character is alone, seeking companionship, literary greatness, justice - or notoriety through terrible acts. Part detective story, part philosophical tract with a nod to both Donna Tart and Stephen King, this novel is compelling, thought provoking and just a little bit spooky." (WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY )

"Michael Collins is one of my favourite authors and he returns in April with The Secret Life of E Robert Pendleton. Collins was shortlisted for the Booker in 2000, when Ian Rankin said it was good to see a crime novel on the shortlist. Collins certainly writes crime fiction, but as the Booker nomination suggests, it is of the highest calibre...

this combination of Michael Chabon and Harlan Coben stands head and shoulders above anything else I read for consideration this month, and indeed so far this year. The recreation of a closeted campus society is superb and the mannerisms of the characters hilariously accurate." (Juliet Swann, Assist Manager, Ottakar's Edinburgh THE BOOKSELLER )

"Malcolm Bradbury did it with The History Man. David Lodge flirted with it in Nice Work. Now Michael Collins adds to the corpus of campus literature with an excoriating fray into the literary skirmishes of Bannockburn, a fictitious college in Indiana... {then mentions Allen Ginsberg, Michael Horovitz, Nabokov, Hemmingway, Stephen King, Leopold & Loeb, Camus, L'Etranger, Tarantino, Willa Cather}... Collins is wittily liberal with such allusions, implicit and explicit: a joy for the informed reader" (Michelene Wandor SUNDAY TIMES )

'... a gripping momentum. Booker-shortlisted Collins has always excelled in the crime genre. Part police procedural, part campus drama, this is a brilliantly plotted, brooding narrative, with a thrilling twist at its close.' (DAILY MAIL )

'another of Collins's meticulously observed American thrillers, given a lift by his considerable skill with characterisation. Previously it has occasionally seemed as if Collins is deliberately slumming it, a literary novelist writing crime fiction to win a bigger audience, but The Secret Life of E Robert Pendleton reveals that it is precisely this marriage of fine prose and popular fiction that makes Collins such an irresistably entertaining writer.' (MATT THORNE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

"a superbly written, cinematic novel. Collins playfully feints at straight-up whodunnit while splicing the whodunnit with sophisticated riffs on literature... an admirably genre-busting work." (IRELAND ON SUNDAY )

"Collins shows his versatility... the result is an intelligent, whodunnit/bloodbath." (TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT )

"the eloquent new novel by Limerick-born author Michael Collins will appeal to fans of the whimsical style of Larry McMurtry and John Irving." (IRISH NEWS )

"Michael Collins is a publicists dream" (IRISH EXAMINER )

'This excellent novel draws on several genres - the campus novel, the rival-novelists novel, the classic crime novel - to make something unique.' (KATE SAUNDERS TIMES ON SATURDAY )

"Michael Collins is a publicists dream"