STOP PRESS – The readers of Spinetinglers Magazine (USA) have voted Requiems for the Departed the best anthology published in the last year.
It has been said before, that every story has already been told. Maybe so. But if you’ve got the gift of the gab, you can tell the same tale as often as you like and still give it a life of its own every time.
Requiems for the Departed flaunts that gift seventeen times over with top shelf stories from Ken Bruen, Maxim Jakubowski, Stuart Neville, Brian McGilloway, Adrian McKinty, John McAllister, Sam Millar, John Grant, Garry Kilworth, and many more.
The children of Conchobar are back to their old mischievous ways, ancient Celtic royalty, druids and banshees are set loose in the new Irish underbelly with murder and mayhem on their minds.
Edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, Requiems for the Departed contains seventeen short stories, inspired by Irish mythology, from some of the finest contemporary writers in the business.
PUBLISHED BY MORRIGAN BOOKS 1st JUNE 2010
Anthology by Crime Scene NI and Morrigan Publishers of Sweden
Praise for John’s story: Bog Man
Set in the ancient Celtic past rather than the modern day, [John McAllister's] “Bog Man” takes readers into the culture and conflicts of the people who stuffed the bodies in the bog. Ties in, in that way, with Brian McGilloway’s Bleed a River Deep and Erin Hart’s Lake of Sorrows. (Critical Mick)
McAllister’s the stuff to keep you awake at night (Detectives Beyond Borders)
John McAllister’s ‘Bog Man’, on the other hand, reverses Adrian McKinty’s approach almost entirely: his protagonist is Tarlóir, an enforcer of the peace who goes up against the Morrigan clan in the years immediately following the arrival of St Patrick. McAllister drenches his tale with ghosts, gods and the superstitions of pre-Christian Ireland. In effect, McAllister frames the ancient tale with the modern concept of the police procedural. Where McKinty takes the myth and looks forward, McAllister takes the contemporary form and looks back. Both are equally persuasive. (Crime Always Pays)
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Some of the other writers in the anthology include:
