Words leave imprints in your mind like footprints in the sand...
1830s/1840s: This is an evocative journey around Dublin and the workings of the Irish prison service and the informants and the seedy goings on of Dublin’s criminal underbelly. Based on true facts, this is very very chilling and utterly fascinating.
It’s 1842 and John Delahunt is in his Dublin prison cell, awaiting the day he will be hanged for the murder of the boy Thomas MacGuire. Instead of using his last moments to plead innocence or repent however,he puts pen to paper and writes down his story of what brought him here.
His story is a fascinating one – John describes how when as a student at Trinity College, he discovered how easily he could earn a bit of cash by informing on friends, neighbours and strangers to the `police’ of Dublin Castle. and then he discovers that informing on a murdered would really make some serious money…..
John Delahunt takes us on a chilling and seedy trail of Dublin of the 1830s and 1840s, evoking the stench of the streets, the dirt on the clothes of the people, the poverty and scent of death all around. The Castle is both terrifying and sinister where justice can be bought at the right price.
As might be expected, John Delahunt is an unreliable narrator but he’s captivating and his story is both gripping and chilling. all the more so when we remember that he is telling us al this while the shadow of the noose hangs in the distance.
As he sits awaiting execution in Kilmainham Jail –
My warder is a man named Turner, an old Kilmainham guard with a grey moustache stained yellow and one eye turned inward.
It’s set among Dublin’s dark alleyways, taverns and tenements and you can almost feel the wet cobbles underneath your feet and the smells of the dark and dank streets as you follow John around as he creeps and hides in the shadows –
He led the way through sloping cobbled streets, still slick from the evening showers…..
The entire novel is laced with dark humour, and you can almost smell the alcohol and the damp taverns as you turn the page. It’s a world of predators, every man for himself. The raw descriptions of life on the streets and hiding in Dublin’s underbelly makes, at times, for a difficult and gut churning read. You won’t want to visit this kind of Dublin for real, but in the literary setting of this debut novel, then it is quite a journey.
