Brouhaha

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The “dark humour” is indeed dark, and it would be impossible to translate this into a novel with Anglican vicars and scone-tampering. In my case, until the first 20 per cent or so, I was reading on—not uninterested but also not gripped. Now his best friend Philip is home asking awkward questions about Dave's death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind, and, most of all, about Sandra - missing now for over a decade, whereabouts unknown. Sandra disappeared and no body was ever found so there is a question over whether she is alive or dead. Ten years previous to this, Dove’s girlfriend Sandra Mohan (only 16 at the time) had gone missing and was never seen again, and an article by a journalist Joanne McCollum pointed to him as responsible, ruining his reputation.

Back in town, he finds Dove left him a graphic novel he wrote and illustrated, and while initially he is puzzled and disinterested, he begins to realise that the book, about the adventures of a hero named Brouhaha is actually Dove’s way of leaving him clues to what he discovered (as also chastising him for his own actions). Each of the characters gradually reveals their complexities and – no pun intended – their troubles, as they tiptoe around a post Good Friday Agreement small town.He’s also followed in the footsteps of his co-stars and fellow comedian Graham Norton and comedienne Pauline McGlynn (Mrs Doyle) by turning his hand to writing. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Young people often leave Tullyanna in pursuit of adventure, so Sandra becomes no more than a puzzling memory. I think it's fair to say that this is not an easy book to pigeonhole, and O'Hanlon's writing style does take a little getting used to, but once you get into the rhythm of it then a curious brilliance starts to reveal itself. All are brought together by the apparent suicide of the street artist “Dove” Connolly, whose death seems to be linked to the disappearance of Sandra Mohan, last seen a decade earlier.

This is a crime novel with twists, with the latter pertaining not just to “who did it” but to the genre itself - part humorous, part Irish history around the times of “The Troubles” and part true literary endeavour. Her boyfriend (Dove) at the time has committed suicide and there is a suspicion he was involved in her disappearance.It wasn’t just the act of self-harm itself, the pointless splattering of blood and bone and brain all over his bedroom wall, that was the issue, unsettling as that was. This has the bones of a cracking literary thriller with heavyweight crime story credentials, but it also has a surreal quality to it in the way the very darkest kind of humour ties everything together.

If you're up for something a little different that challenges your idea of what a dark comedy can achieve in terms of literary weight, then I bring you Brouhaha! The dialogue is enhanced by utilising some local dialect, which I do admit to taking a wee while to get to grips with.

I was so looking forward to this book, as I really enjoy watching Ardal on TV and think he is a brilliant actor, comedian and also seems such a down to earth guy, but I really struggled to get into this book, just felt a little all over the place and seemed to jump all over the place.

Decades on and I still have to remind myself that publishing is a business and the business of business is money; not aesthetics, or enlightenment or the avant-garde. In so doing, poor Dove had spread panic amongst the townspeople, raising all sorts of ugly questions, reviving all sorts of rumours, and inviting all sorts of unwelcome attention upon them.This was a wee bit heavy going until I managed to settle in to the author's writing style, which did take a bit longer than usual for me. In the fictional town of Tullyanna, which reportedly bears more than a passing resemblance to O’Hanlon’s home town of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, Dove Connolly has blown his brains out, while Sandra Mohan went missing years beforehand. The trio of an unhappily retired Gardai, an unpopular journalist, and a not so prodigal friend, make a fun group of flawed characters on the hunt for answers. I’ve been a fan of Ardal’s , since his days in father Ted and his other roles in the BBC Comedy My Hero and the drama Death in Paradise. The writing is very intense and I failed to pick the bones out of the story; not for want of trying mind.