Seán Moncrieff Book order (chronological)

We ve been clever and stupid, principled and corrupt. We can be kind and cruel, guilty of dopey optimism and chronic fatalism. We re friendly, but near impossible to get to know. We re proud to be Irish but often crippled with self-loathing. We think we re great, but not really. We find ourselves fascinating. Of course we do. We re a paradox. There s something about Irish people, about the way their minds work. But what makes them think the way they do? In his search for the answer to this question and the key to the Irish psyche, Sean Moncrieff roams from the pub to the online world, the shop to the pulpit. Packed with observations, revelations and intriguing detours into the murkier recesses of Irish history and culture, The Irish Paradox is a roadmap of the contradictory, mutating nature of Irishness.

When Manda Ferguson falls out of an apartment window to her death, the story is on all the front pages. But then her death starts to have an effect on the living. Baz: the man accused of killing her has to decide whether or not to turn himself in. Maurice: the taxi driver who inadvertently helped Baz escape wrestles with whether he should mete out his own form of justice. Rachel: the failing election candidate who has to choose between giving up or speaking her mind. Michael: the priest who administered the last rites to Manda and who is finally forced to confront his true (dis)beliefs. Carol: Manda’s cousin. A tabloid reporter on the verge of losing her job who begins to discover some curious gaps in her memory… But the effect travels even further than these five intersecting stories when claims are made that Manda’s ‘spirit’ is appearing beneath lampposts. In an economically devastated Ireland, where people have lost faith in politics, in business or religion, each character strives to answer the question: when there’s nothing left to believe in, what can we believe?

Dublin was mucky and vulgar. Like a tourist who gets drunk and wakes up with a huge tattoo. This is what it's like for your name is Simon Dilion. You're 35. You're a failure. Too hungover to go to work, too lazy to get a new job, too keen to blame everyone your mad father, your estranged wife, your so-called friends. Blame them. Blame Dublin. You'd rather do a few lines of coke, but there's a beautiful French woman you can't remember meeting, cops banging on the door asking about a dead woman you don't know, Russian gangsters asking questions you can't answer. Murders all over the city; bombs in O'Connell Street. And it's got nothing to do with you. Except that it's all your fault. A needle-sharp, funny and scathing thriller, set in a Dublin most people don't read about - the real one.