ALL THE DEAD VOICES

TITLE: ALL THE DEAD VOICES

AUTHOR: DECLAN HUGHES

Audio: 9 CD’s / 9 hours, 15 minutes

           Narrated by Stanley Townsend

Date: 17/03/2012

Grade: 4

Details: no. 4 Ed Loy

Library

Ed Loy is a busy man. He finds himself keeping an eye on Patrick, the younger brother of a friend of his. The young man is a talented footballer with a promising future who seems to be falling under the influence of a very violent drug-dealer. It is up to Ed to try and find out what the footballer is up to and report on his findings. This should be straightforward enough but soon after starting his inquiries Ed finds himself violently attacked by two men. And when those two men turn up dead the next morning Ed knows that, although he didn’t kill them, this could be the start of big trouble for him. And that is only the start of it. Next thing he hears is that Patrick has been violently killed by persons unknown.

In a separate case, Ed is hired by a woman who asks him to re-investigate the murder of her father 15 years ago. Her mother’s lover was arrested and convicted for the murder at the time but subsequently acquitted when it turned out that there were three other suspects who had never been investigated.

With Dublin about the celebrate the official opening of a new bridge to celebrate the peace in Ireland, Loy finds himself up to his neck in violence, investigating two cases that have their origins in the heights of the troubles.

This is a very violent yet well plotted and uncomfortably realistic mystery. In Ed Loy we meet an investigator prepared to do almost anything to solve his case. He has a cynical view of both himself and the society he is operating in as well as a softer side he doesn’t like to show.

These Ed Loy mysteries don’t really come with good guys. Everybody in the story is in one way or another involved in acts that can’t quite meet the light of day. Nobody is blameless and some have no redeeming qualities what-so-ever.

The story is very well plotted. Story-lines that appear to be completely unconnected to each other eventually come together to make a coherent whole. And while in some books that coming together of story-lines infuriates me, it makes sense in this book set in Ireland which after all is a small country with only a few million people living in it. A country where connections run deep and are cultivated both in fiction and in real life.

The narrator of this book did a great job giving all the various characters in the story their own voice. At all times it was perfectly clear whose point of view I was listening to and how that character was feeling.

I will have to see if I can get my hands on more audio books in this series. Despite all the violence, this was one fascinating, thrilling and compulsive listening experience.