Disorder by Gerard BrennanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Disorder.
The crowd roars.
Noise.
It crackles like a radio between stations.
Violence.
A troop of civilians moves as one. There's a savage beauty to this chaos. It tumbles like the tide. Crashes into riot shields. Seeks a break in the seal.
It's relentless.
Disorder.
I like Gerard Brennan. His early novellas, like The Point and Wee Rockets, 'crackled and fizzled' with violence and sly dark, very dark, Northern Ireland humour. And, while his 2014 novel, Undercover, felt like he was writing the book he thought he should write, a fairly straight thriller. Disorder is a return to that gritty, wryly funny, Belfast Noir.
Like the best Noir, Disorder is populated by disreputable characters with varying levels of stupidity and sleekedness (look it up..). It's a story of revenge, of drugs, of riots, of political and corporate meddling, all underpinned by a black comedy that perhaps only people from Norn Iron can understand but will hopefully be appreciated further afield.
Published by those nice people at No Alibis, the best bookshop in the world, Gerard Brennan's Disorder deserves to be in the company of Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman and Brian McGilloway whose recommendations all appear on the cover.
Highly recommended.
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