The Dying Breed - Declan Hughes

It probably helps if you've read Declan Hughes's earlier Ed Loy novels, which I haven't. It's not that you'll miss anything - the backstory is fairly well covered in outline here - but the problem seems to be that the background adds an unnecessary level of bleakness and disillusionment to the deep sewer of corruption that Loy uncovers in the rich Southside Dublin families of the country's horseracing industry.

That whole affair adds up to a stinking mess of race fixing, corruption and cover-ups, "close breeding", murder, prostitution, rape, institutional abuse of orphans, drug-dealing... there's even a serial killer on the loose. You name it, Ed Loy uncovers it in the best PI fashion, the whole mess implausibly just waiting for someone to be invited to come along and pick at the festering wound of the whole rotten business. Along the way, Loy has to associate with a lot of disagreeable people both in high society and in the lower classes with the most common and dangerous of thugs.

That in itself is all rather extreme, but true to form, Loy also has his own personal demons to battle with - a broken marriage and a drinking problem, as well as characters from his past just waiting for the opportunity to crack open his head. As a bitter satire of the pillars of Irish high society and religious institutions - the Buñuel reference early on in the novel isn't by chance - it's suitably dark and brutal in its outlook, but after reading The Dying Breed, you may feel like you want to wash your hands after handling it, or maybe even go to confession.