July • 2006 IMSC students take a back seat - Irish American News

July 2006 IRISH AMERICAN NEWS 23
that was 1941 and this is 2006
and is said by Declan Hughes.
Ed Loy lives in Los Angeles,
where he is a private investigator.
He left Ireland twenty years ago
and now returns to Dublin for his
mother’s funeral. He is amazed
at the prosperity in Ireland. He
“...fi nds a city familiar and yet
changed utterly...”
Enjoy these quotes from The
Wrong Kind of Blood. They were
written by a master.
The police detective tries to
belittle Ed Loy: “A private dick,
is it? Fast cars and bourbon chasers
and a forty-fi ve, what? Is that
the way it is, Ed, shoot-outs and
double crosses and dames?...”
“No, I said, that’s not the way
it is...”
“Mostly it’s a case of sitting in
a car all night drinking stale coffee
and eating damp sandwiches
and pissing in a bottle...”
As she hires the private detective
she says: “Since you are
going to be working for me, I
suppose we better sort the practical
side out fi rst...”
“Last job I worked I got a
thousand dollars a day.”
“A thousand dollars? I thought
you said you were the monkey.
You helped the organ grinder
out.”
“That’s how it started.”
“And then what happened?”
“The organ grinder died, and
the monkey took his place.”
“[Her} hand went to her throat,
and her eyes widened.”
“...How did your boss die?”
“He was murdered.”
“Did you get the guy who
killed him?”
“His wife killed him.”
Meeting a pretentious crime
boss: He “...snipped the end of
a large Cohiba, ran it under his
nose and sniff ed. It made a scrabbling
sound as it chaff ed against
his moustache, like a small
animal trapped behind drywall. I
thought of ramming the cigar up
his nose. It would pass the time,
but it wouldn’t help to crack the
case.”
Loy observes: “I... looked
past the gray limestone dome of
the Custom House to the new
cathedral of economic prosperity
in Dublin: the International
Financial Services Centre, a
gleaming complex of blue-tinted
plate glass and gray steel. It was
a power house for banks and
brokers... it made Dublin look
like any other city, I guess that
was the point: at one stage in
our history, we tried to assert a
unique Irish identity by isolatng
ourselves from the outside world.
All that did was cause half the
population to emigrate.”
Saint Patrick’s
Battalion
By James Alexander Thom
Ballantine Books; $24.95; ISBN
0-345-44556-2
www.amazon.com
Thom tells the remarkable
real-life story of John Riley, an
Irishman who led his men to
desert the American military
during the Mexican-American
War. Riley rattles camp hierarchy
when he rails against the
brutal treatment of Irish soldiers,
but soon he goes further, and
switched sides where he leads a
corps of Irishmen called the San
Patricios (St. Patrick’s Battalion).
But when they are captured, their
resolve is tested in the extreme.
Alternating between Paddy’s
account and that of Mexican
soldier Augustin Juvero, Thom
constructs a gripping novel that
questions our concepts of war,
duty, loyalty and national identity
and draws intriguing parallels to
our current confl ict in Iraq.
James Alexander Thom was
formerly a US marine, a newspaper
and magazine editor, and
a member of the faculty at the
Indiana University Journalism
School. He lives in Indiana hill
country near Bloomington with
his wife Dark Rain Thom.
Bornholm Night-
Ferry
By Aidan Higgins
Dalkey Archive Presss; $12.95;
ISBN 1-56478-415-0
www.amazon.com
During the fi ve years of their
adulterous aff air, Finn Fitzgerald
and Elin Marstrander spend only 47
days and nights together. At each of
their meetings, they try desperately
to live up to the passionate letters
they’ve exchanged while apart. But
as life inevitably interferes, they
each become desperate to steal
some last little time together before
Booking Passage: We Irish and
Americans
By Thomas Lynch
WW Norton & Co; $14.95; ISBN 0-393-32857-0
www.amazon.com
For thirty-fi ve years Thomas
Lynch has kept returning to his
ancestral home in West Clare,
Ireland. Booking Passage is
divided into nine chapters, each
of which describes and explores
the life in rural Moveen and
suburban Michigan – and how
that life relates to Irish-America,
America-at-large and the larger
world. One chapter follows the
Lynch family from Ireland to
America and back and one examines
the workings of Irish Catholicism
in Lynch’s family and
the wider culture and measures
the distance between private faith
and public scandal. As Lynch
makes abundantly clear in this
witty and wise collection, we
are all fellow pilgrims passing
through life, eager to leave a
record of our having been there.
www.thomaslynch.com
the dream ends. One of Ireland’s
most accomplished writers, Aidan
Higgins is the author of more than
a dozen books.
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