Dead I Well May Be

“Yes. It's true. We're lost. We're in a boat on the wild ocean. The seas are high, and there is no compass. We're fucked. Blind. Ignorant. The night bewildering and there is no dawn. We are outside latitude or longitude or maps. No land, no dead reckoning, no horizon. Fucked in spades. In this cabin of stale air, with asthmatics, fellow fools before the mast, who knows no shanties but who cough nocturnes for me. But they're more doomed than me. I'm ok, really, for I'm not with them. I am not a boy or a man, rather I am a cow, or a black buffalo, or a bird, or a tiny caterpillar crawling under the door. I am, that is, until one of the others wheezes or says something and I'm back again, a haunted passenger, seasick, lost, fucked.”If you're in the mood for some gorgeous, hard boiled, Irish style noir [a:Adrian McKinty|12433|Adrian McKinty|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1584967497p2/12433.jpg] is your man. The year is 1992 and young Michael Forsythe has left the Troubles in Belfast for a host of new ones in New York. He's a bit of muscle and jack of all trades to Darkey White, a local Irish mobster. Things are going as well as they can until they don't. It's a tale that's been told before but the difference here is that the whole story is from Michael's POV and we're in his head: funny, sarcastic, smart, sometimes morbid, lyrical without being syrupy. I loved it. The other thing that warmed my heart was the pitch perfect depiction of New York at that time. Flawless.

Couldn't get into it. The writing was strange and hard to follow. And characters were introduced as if we already knew about them.