The Devil I Know
The thirteenth Earl of Howth, Tristram St. Lawrence, a translator of some repute, returns to his ancestral Irish castle home after a long absence only because the plane taking him to a conference in Florida makes an emergency landing in Dublin. Before he knows it, he’s swept into a business partnership with an old school chum, developer Desmond Hickey, who’s visualizing making it big in the Irish land boom. All along, the skids are greased by shadowy financier M. Deauville, who had first reached out to St. Lawrence after his near-fatal bender and had since served as his AA sponsor. The euphoria of making unimaginable amounts of money culminates in an all-night meeting with Hickey and St. Lawrence and the golden circle of Ireland’s money men, making bids on properties in Britain and Shanghai, all financed with debt. And when the bubble bursts, payment must be made. In crisp prose and a cleverly structured narrative, Kilroy (Tenderwire, 2006) casts a sharply satiric eye on international finance gone awry. Smart fiction based on fact. --Michele Leber