Yeats Is Dead

Yeats is Dead! doesn't seem like a book so much as a protracted pub crawl in the company of 15 hyper-articulate pottymouths. Roddy Doyle, Frank McCourt, Anthony Cronin and a dozen of their lesser-known compatiots have written a literary mystery that isn't terribly literary and doesn't really hang together as a mystery. It is, however, a showcase for riffing by some very clever writers. The novel commences with a chapter from Doyle, wherein a couple of cops on the take raid the trailer of a down-and-outer. They've been instructed to do this by the all-knowing underworld crime boss Mrs Bloom (much given to crying "O yes" in proper Joycean fashion). Unfortunately, the two policemen accidentally kill the resident hobo and in doing so set off a whirlwind of brutality, inner-city intrigue and unlikely romance.