Patrick McGinley Book order

'A rich and loving novel, Bogmail is full of wonder' New York Magazine .

In a comic Irish mystery worthy of Kingsley Amis or Peter Ustinov, Roarty, a pub owner, kills his teenage daughter's lover, drops the body into a bog, and returns to his pub, only to find he is the object of blackmailer's attentions. A very fine read.

When one of the few remaining villagers in Leaca is murdered, suspicion falls on the one resident Englishman and outsider, Nick Ambrose. As tensions rise and old forms of law threaten to impose summary justice, the easy and rich fabric of life that has sustained the town for so many years unravels and tears with shocking results. Set in rural western Ireland in 1948, McGingley's novel is a gripping and powerful exploration of community, violence and Irish ways. "Filled with elegiac prose, this shocking tale of moral decay that spreads from one black heart to claim everything in its path will keep readers turning the pages."--Publishers Weekly, Aug. 26, 2013

It's P.G.Wodehouse meets Carl Jung with knives drawn.

A canny, loving portrait of a 1940s and 50s rural Irish upbringing, a moving homage to the folk imagination, and a heartfelt valedictory for a traditional way of life 'subsistence farming, sheep-rearing, hand-weaving, fiddle-playing and story-telling' that has largely vanished from our shores. Born in Glencolmcille in 1937, McGinley tells of growing up in the back of beyond, an isolated, seaside village marked by a generosity of spirit and a true sense of community, wherein he first encountered such mysteries as crab toes, family, sex, death, and school, along with a larger-than-life local curate, Fr James McDyer, a radical socialist in a Roman collar. McGinley also deftly describes a number of other illustrious blow-ins to the Glen, from the eponymous St Colmcille to the renowned American painter Rockwell Kent, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and British composer Sir Arnold Baxe. Here is a deeply felt, consummately plumbed, and superbly crafted story of our vanishing past to sit on the shelf next to Alice Taylor's To School Through the Fields