Review: Dead I Well May Be

Dead I Well May Be is a new generation of hard-boiled noir, featuring a young Irishman brought over to early-nineties New York to work as muscle for a mobster.

Adrian McKinty’s strong and fast-moving debut benefits greatly from his writing style, with a strong sense of place and a great ear for the Irish dialect and idioms. The plot is fast and furious, with great pacing and inevitability. It’s one of those novels that keep you reading way too late into the night.

Dead I Well May Be does suffer a bit from the narrator’s lack of pathos, coming across more as if he’s suffering from Asperger’s than from a violent childhood in Belfast during the Troubles.

That aside, though, it’s a gripping read.