Pat Carty | Business Post

Pat Carty

Writer

Book Review: Harlan Coben’s latest thriller will wind you up, but not let you down

The supremely crafted I Will Find You delivers on every level and has more twists than a 1950s dance hall

Book review: Short story collection gives Atwood’s marvellous imagination full room to roam

Old Babes in the Wood is the author’s eleventh collection of short stories and showcases her mastery of the written word

Book review: Warning from history of when racism flourished under guise of science

Paul Harding’s third novel This Other Eden recalls a time when eugenics seemingly gave a licence to learned society to marginalise and torment those considered undesirables

Book review: How Madagascar pirates may have put traditional society to the sword

In Pirate Enlightenment Davide Graeber details how the flowering of equality among various multi-ethnic buccaneering groups could have influenced the enlightenment movement in Europe, but the evidence for this is thin on the ground

Book review: Masterful Barry brings poetry to every page in Old God’s Time

One strand of Sebastian Barry’s novel deals with a cold case involving clerical child abuse, while the other, perhaps more impressive one, speaks to loneliness and grief

Book review: Words wield the power over blinding violence in Rushdie’s Victory City

Salman Rushdie’s first book since he was blinded in one eye in a stabbing attack is a rip-roaring fantasy tale that emphasises the power of words

Us and Them: Amazing adventures of a couple of characters who rocked the album cover world

Mark Blake’s potted history of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell’s design collective takes a romp through ‘the greatest decade in the history of humanity’ with a group of weird and wonderful friends

Slow-paced thriller fails to deliver in this soap-like crime mystery

The third instalment in bestselling author Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk series keeps the reader waiting too long for both thrills and answers

My Father’s House: Thrilling tale of real-life Irish priest who saved 6,500 people from the Nazis

Joseph O’Connor is in fine form with his fictionalised novel about the Kerry priest Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty who was stationed in the Vatican during WWII and put himself in the firing line to help targets of the Nazi murder machine

The Shards: Easton Ellis dives into meta-fiction, but leaves his readers floundering in the shallows

The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel since 2010, is a half-decent thriller in need of a serious edit

Stella Maris – Cormac McCarthy’s latest has all the darkness with no dawn

The renowned author’s nihilistic novel Stella Maris is crammed with painful mathematical and philosophical acrobatics – and that’s the easy part

Chuck Berry: Music brings words to life in well-pitched biography of a flawed musical genius

ell-researched and stylishly written account of Chuck Berry’s life captures the highs and lows of a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and teen icon’s career

The Passenger: McCarthy following a familiar road with ‘Western’ thriller

In a story heavy with philosophy and ideas, the renowned writer weaves a tale of a Hemingway-type salvage diver, racked with grief for the dead sister he loved, who is sent to investigate an airline crash at sea

The Translations of Seamus Heaney: Collection of poet’s dazzling translations sings with vitality

Marco Sonzogni has brought together 100 texts of important works translated by the renowned poet and has added value with his own extensive notes

A Guest at the Feast: Tóibín’s tasty essays will leave readers hungry for more

Writer’s latest collection shows that the Irish author of The Master and The Magician is himself a little of both

Bournville: Incisive novel asks how Britain arrived at voting for Johnson and Brexit

Author Jonathan Coe tries to answer the question of what has happened to his beloved homeland by tracking 75 years of British history as seen through the eyes of one extended family

Dickens & Prince: Tracing the genius from Pickwick Papers to Purple Rain

The great novelist and musician are two of author Nick Hornby’s favourite artists – in his new book he outlines how they both had difficult childhoods, produced miraculous work in their 20s and had a ‘weakness’ for women

Paul Newman, the movie idol who never bought into his own myth

A new memoir from interviews recorded in the eighties reveals a modest man with whom fame never sat easily; felt guilty about the death of his son from an overdose and who preferred talking about his charity work and motor racing

The Romantic: Marvellous storytelling from a globe-trotting witness to history

The Romantic is a fictionalised biography set in the 19th century that encompasses major historical events and farflung adventures

Act of Oblivion: Harris delivers another gripping yarn steeped in British history

The king of the mid-market thrillers still has few equals in his field, as his latest potboiler illustrates