"Yeats Is Dead!" edited by Joseph O'Connor
Title: Yeats Is Dead!
Author: Joseph O'Connor (editor)
My Grade: C+
This is a bizarre (not to mention very silly at times) crime novel written for a good cause, all proceeds from the sales of this book went to Amnesty International. Each chapter is written by a different Irish writer. Because there is a slew of different writing styles, it's not surprising it's a bit uneven, but considering there were 15 writers involved it could have been a lot worse. I was particularly amused by Charlie O'Neill's chapter. I have no idea who this writer is and apparently nobody else does either, I can't find anything else he might have written! But according to the end of this book, he's a play/screenwriter.
The plot centers around the search for an unpublished manuscript allegedly from legendary Irish author James Joyce. With each chapter the body count rises as do the odd twists. The characters (and there are a lot of them) are strange ones. The evil criminal mastermind Mrs. Bloom (haha) and her sister, daughter (now in the loony bin), son-in-law (one of the many dead by the end of the book), and a whole bunch of other weirdos and corrupt individuals make for a mostly entertaining read.
The 15 writers who contributed to Yeats Is Dead! were: Roddy Doyle, Conor McPherson, Gene Kerrigan, Gina Moxley, Marian Keyes, Anthony Cronin, Owen O'Neill, Hugo Hamilton, Joseph O'Connor (also the editor), Tom Humphries, Pauline McLynn, Charlie O'Neill, Donal O'Kelly, Gerard Stembridge, and Frank McCourt.