Brouhaha by Ardal O'Hanlon

 

Brouhaha by Ardal O'Hanlon.

Published 26th May 2022 by Harper Collins Ireland.

From the cover of the book:

Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove.

Now his best friend Sharkey is home asking awkward questions about Dove’s death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind, and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for over a decade, whereabouts unknown.

This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters…

A mystery, a black comedy, a satire on Ireland’s tangled politics of memory, Brouhaha is set in a small town on the Irish border during the uneasy transition to peace. And peace doesn’t come easy in these parts.

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Sharkey has returned to his Irish border town home of Tullyanna, in the wake of his old friend Dove's apparent suicide. It is a place he has been trying to avoid for the past ten years, after events got out of hand following the disappearance of his friend Sandra Mohan, who was Dove's on-off girlfriend. Sharkey is not really sure why he is here, but a strange message he recently received from the broken and drug-addicted Dove about Sandra gives him the feeling that the time has come to confront what really happened to her.

Dove has left little behind to give Sharkey any clues about what he had discovered, except an avant-garde mural in the local shopping centre, and a rather surreal hand-drawn graphic novel he wrote about a character called Brouhaha - both of which bizarrely seem to reference many of the residents of Tullyanna. 

Sharkey finds himself joining forces with retired Garda Kevin Healy, who is haunted by the fact that he was unable to find out what happened to Sandra, and a local journalist Joanne McCollum who is obsessed with the case. Maybe together they can break through the web of lies that has built up around Sandra's disappearance and finally get to the truth? If they can stay out of harm's way...

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started reading this novel from actor and comedian Ardal O'Hanlon: perhaps a light hearted comedy about life in a small Irish border town? In fact, it became rapidly clear that this was going to be an astoundingly different kind of beast.

The storyline moves between the events around the unsolved disappearance of teenager Sandra Mohan in 1994, and the impact of Sharkey, Kevin and Joanne's efforts to finally get to the truth following Dove's death - when all Tullyanna's dirty little secrets come spilling out. At its heart, this is a darned good murder mystery and I loved the way the trio of investigators go about tracking down the clues in their own special ways. The story keeps you guessing from start to finish, and it has an intriguing bevy of threads woven into it about secrets and the sins of the past. 

O'Hanlon floods this piece with many aspects of small town Irish life, and he explores some very interesting themes around the turbulent political times that affected the border region between Ulster and the Republic of Ireland. The characters are colourfully vivid, and for the most part, decidedly dysfunctional. So many of the complex threads tug on your heart-strings, and I found myself frequently overwhelmed at the beautifully tender way O'Hanlon describes the myriad of emotionally charged scenes - the moments between Kevin and his baby grandson Paul in particular had me weeping every time. The way our three unlikely crusaders join together to finally lay Sandra's ghost to rest is also satisfyingly heart-warming - despite the full-on ration of violence and gritty action that forms the majority of the storyline.

I think it's fair to say that this is not an easy book to pigeonhole, and O'Hanlon's writing style does take a little getting used to, but once you get into the rhythm of it then a curious brilliance starts to reveal itself. This has the bones of a cracking literary thriller with heavyweight crime story credentials, but it also has a surreal quality to it in the way the very darkest kind of humour ties everything together. Throughout the novel I often found myself smiling wryly at the quirkiness of it all, even in the bleakest of moments, and this somehow lightens the whole piece even though the storyline is filled with poignancy.

O'Hanlon says of this book that:

"Growing up in the border region, I've always been captivated by the language and deadpan character and dark humour of the people and the place. In trying to capture that I've tried to write the sort of book I love to read - pacy, thrilling, edgy, insightful, funny, and humane and I really hope people enjoy it."

I can confirm that he has achieved all of these aims in this off-beat comic satire, and produced a little gem of a book that serves to hold you attention all the way through. If you're up for something a little different that challenges your idea of what a dark comedy can achieve in terms of literary weight, then I bring you Brouhaha!

Brouhaha is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Harper Collins for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Ardal O’Hanlon is an actor, comedian, writer, and documentary filmmaker. A star of several high-profile television series, including Death in Paradise, My Hero, and the BAFTA-winning Father Ted, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel Talk of the Town (1998). 

He lives in Dublin, Ireland.