The Wrong Kind of Blood

By: Declan Hughes

Narrated by: Stanley Townsend

Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Ed Loy hasn't been back to Dublin for 20 years. Now his mother is dead, and he has returned home to bury her. He soon realises that the world waiting for him is very different from the one he left behind all those years ago. An old classmate, Linda Dawson, pleads with him to find her missing husband, Peter. She doesn't want the police involved.

When Loy finds an old photograph of his long missing father on Peter Dawson's boat, and a corpse is discovered in the foundations of the local town hall, things begin to get personal. Suddenly, he finds himself thrown into a world of organised crime, long-hidden secrets, corruption, violence...and murder.

©2006 Declan Hughes (P)2006 Isis Publishing Ltd

Critic reviews

"Brilliantly atmospheric...this book is a winner." (Douglas Kennedy)

Great narration

After I finished all of Adrian McKinty's books, and Stuart Neville's books, and Tana French's books (all were great!), Declan Hughes was recommended to me. This first book was ok - not awesome; not horrid.

Stanley Townsend's narration was delightful. I've always been fascinated by his voice (The Hollow Crown on PBS for example.) Great job. But the story only marginally kept me interested. I'll try the next book at some point. I like the Irish POV.

Interesting

This book was difficult to get into partly because the narrator sucked. His attempt to make different voices was annoying and often difficult to understand. But the story became very interesting and worth my time. There were quit a few chatecters to keep track of and I frequently had to regress to remember who they were. The ending was very surprising. This is my first but not my last Declan Hughes book. Not quit as vivid of a writer as Perter May but very entertaining

Rough, Pacy, Sharp and Entertainingly Irish

What Stuart MacBride is doing for the Scottish voice, Declan Hughes does for the Irish.
The Irish really love language and use it with style. Declan Hughes has the Irish Storyteller's talent. He kept me enthralled from beginning to end. Many times I laughed, stopped and re-listened to witty, well crafted sayings or descriptions. The dialogue was magnificent. Each character had their own voice and were so very Irish in style.
A complicated web of family, neighbours and childhood friends hopscotch their way through drug and property deals, alongside yacht clubees and corrupt councillors. All very fast and violent.
Stanley Townsend gives a great performance. He obviously enjoyed telling the story as much as I enjoyed listening to it.

Loved the Irishness but had problems after that

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I wanted to like this book (I loved the Irishness of the story) but keep tripping over a few things. For one thing I couldn’t get interested in the plot. For another, I couldn't muster much sympathy for the protagonistLastly, I just kept laughing at the sexy parts (and this may rate a spoiler alert so stop reading if you don’t want to know) . . .Well, in one scene (and I listened a couple of times just to make sure I heard it right) The protag gets the stuffing beats out of him --- broken teeth, completely smashed up and bloody face, other body injuries. Then his love interest shows up. After they escape, they have wild monkey sex (with broken teeth and a nose he can’t breath thorough?) Plus he is sure he loves her like no other,,, forget the part about her being drunk or high or both all the time AND the fact that she is promiscuous s and seems to think that is shouldn’t be a problem.Well, I just couldn’t stretch my gullibility that far so I laughed myself silly

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Wrong Kind of Blood?