The guards - Ken Bruen

Edgy, pitch-black humour... With few, if any, antecedents The Guards is one of the curiously rare Irish crime novels' - Guardian 'It's a fine piece of work, a ripping read; set in Galway, funny and sad and tough... I will henceforth be first in the queue for anything he writes' - Gene Kerrigan, Sunday Independent 'An elegiac novel of despair and redemption... Bleak, amoral and disturbing' - Irish Independent 'A blistering tale of revenge and retribution that comes off the page like a shot off a shovel... Not one for the faint of heart' - The Irish Times'