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Fiction in brief: The Detainees, by Sean Hughes/The File on H, by Ismail Kadare/Skin, by Tobias Hill/Loving Ways, by Maurice Gee/Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon/Lambs of God, by Marele Day
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Fiction in brief: The Detainees, by Sean Hughes/The File on H, by Ismail Kadare/Skin, by Tobias Hill/Loving Ways, by Maurice Gee/Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon/Lambs of God, by Marele Day
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Fiction in brief: The Detainees, by Sean Hughes/The File on H, by Ismail Kadare/Skin, by Tobias Hill/Loving Ways, by Maurice Gee/Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon/Lambs of God, by Marele Day
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Newspaper Article
Fiction in brief: The Detainees, by Sean Hughes/The File on H, by Ismail Kadare/Skin, by Tobias Hill/Loving Ways, by Maurice Gee/Los Alamos, by Joseph Kanon/Lambs of God, by Marele Day
1997
Overview
Billed as a psychological thriller, this plumbs the serpentine pasts of three erstwhile school-pals from a Dublin feeder town: John Palmer, sometime bully victim and now successful antiques dealer; Michelle Palmer, a manic depressive delivered from prostitution into a loveless marriage with John; and Alan `Red' Bulger, a former school menace who, after a sojourn in the States, returns to worm his way back into John's life, filch his wife and take on the local protection racket. (Sean) Hughes is a comedian and the manner of his inspired stand-up observations is preserved in the text - whether deriding the false calm of a Dublin park (`the policemen take their fishing very seriously') or pondering the inexplicable intrusion of a certain rotund talk-show host into his sexual fantasies. The real achievement of the book, though, is its treatment of the less farcical obstacles facing its characters. You would think such tensions, and the unbridled violence they precipitate, would be trickier to manipulate than the outright absurdities Hughes usually works in. Yet he fashions them with startling precision and depth.
Publisher
Guardian News & Media Limited
