To The Last Page

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 ...