Declan Hughes

Declan Hughes – One of Dublin Noir’s finest.
The Wrong Kind of Blood
The Colour of Blood

Published by John Murray


One of the best things about writing this piece is the fact that I know I already have two more novels in this excellent series to read (stacked within the ever growing ‘TBR’ pile of books here).

I’ve had a copy of the first in Hughes’s Ed Loy series for some time, but have only recently gotten around to reading it, resulting in me now having four books in total to read before I have to consider pestering the man to write another (which I’m sure he has underway anyhow – he’s unlikely to be waiting for a nudge from the likes of me).

Ed Loy is a great character and makes a nice change to have a modern Private Investigator rather than a cop taking centre stage in a series of crime novels. The fact that Loy can pretty much work to his own rules and code without the red tape of standard police procedurals lends itself to grittier work, with him able to really get his hands dirty and get as deep into the criminal underworld he investigates as he chooses to.

In the first novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood, Loy is returning home to Dublin from America for the first time in twenty years for the funeral of his mother. At the request of an old school friend to seek out her missing husband, Loy finds himself sucked deep into a world of organised crime that has sprung up within the world in which he used to live.

The Colour of Blood goes deeper still, and much darker, with Loy taking on another missing person case, this time of a young girl. In the second book, dark and sinister family history, corruption, pornography and child abuse are all in the mix for an even tougher case for Loy.

Although reading them in sequence, the second book has little back-story needed, so could be read as a stand-alone with no problem at all to a new reader of the series.

Ed Loy is a great creation and Declan Hughes is a writer who deserves more attention – his novels are well structured and their plots and characters labyrinthine in their description - your full attention is required, but will be surely rewarded with a great read.

Now to make some headway into that ‘TBR’ pile to get to The Dying Breed and The City of Lost Girls.


Keith B Walters