Customer Reviews

All the Dead Voices

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Good storyline, but did not have the same spellbinding enjoyment as 'Bad Blood', which was infinitely superior. The characters in this story are not as well formed and I found myself having to go back to the beginning on occasion to work out who everyone was and how they knew the main character.

I was surprised by the negative reviews I found for a book which kept my attention throughout. I wonder if the writer offended some political sensitivities with his negative portrayal of the IRA. It seemed realistic to me but I'm not Irish. As I did enjoy it I am actually pleased to see that other reviewers say his other work, which I haven't read, is much better!

Make no mistake. This is an Irish crime novel written by a very Irish author. It's set in contemporary Dublin about the time the Celtic Tiger bears its fangs. It takes place over a couple weeks around Easter when all good Dubliners remember the heroes of the Easter uprising of 1916, the violent confrontation at the General Post Office when Irish Republicans fought to oust the British from the land. But the dead voices in Hughes' book are not heroes, they are victims.

Ed Loy, Hughes' private investigator, has appeared in three other novels. He returned to Ireland after twenty years in America to bury his mother and stayed around. In ALL THE DEAD VOICES he is hired to find the murderer of Anne Fogarty's father, a revenue inspector who was killed fifteen years ago, and to investigate the death of a rising soccer star. Several ex-IRA men and an Irish mobster are suspects in both murders.

But in the background of the story is another incident that occurred in 1980, other brutal unnecessary murders. After you finish the book, you'll remember the dead voices of these victims. They will haunt you!