#BookReview | #TheQuietMan (McGarry Stateside #3) by Caimh McDonnell | @Caimh | @McFori_Ink

‘Getting into prison is easy, it’s getting out that’s tricky.’
– The Quiet Man

[ About the Book ]

Almost everyone in prison will tell you they’re in there for a crime they didn’t commit, but Anthony Rourke really means it. That’s because he’s actually Bunny McGarry, who has got himself into one of Nevada’s finest penitentiaries under false pretences. He is there to bust someone else out.

The Sisters of the Saint, no ordinary bunch of nuns, find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place when two of their order are taken hostage. The only way to ensure their safe return is to trade them for the mysterious man who is now Bunny’s cellmate. Rumours abound as to who this man really is, but seeing as nobody is allowed to communicate with him in any way, figuring that out will be tricky.

The last thing the situation needs is further complications, but when Sister Dionne comes into contact with an UFO cult, she recognises it as a massive con job. The reason she is so sure is because the whole thing was her idea in the first place—and now she is determined to put an end to it.

The clock is ticking, the prison authorities are suspicious, and lying low has never been a McGarry strong suit. Can Bunny and the Sisters pull off an audacious prison break against near impossible odds?

[ My Review ]

The Quiet Man by Caimh McDonnell is the third book in the McGarry Stateside series. Published with McFori Ink on October 7th, it is described as ‘The Shawshank Redemption meets Ocean’s Eleven’ Now at this point it really is no secret that I am a HUGE FAN of Bunny McGarry, the main character in many, although not all, of Ciamh’s books.

When I first met Bunny in A Man with One of Those Faces, he was wreaking havoc on the streets of Dublin and beyond

“Bunny McGarry……well I so loved Bunny. Maybe it’s the Cork connection but everything about Bunny appealed to me in this story. He’s an alcoholic, a loner, a man with nothing to lose. He uses extremely unorthodox methods to reach his end game with the assistance of Mabel his hurley. For any of you not familiar with the hurley, it is a piece of wood in the shape of a flat type club that is used in the Gaelic game of Hurling. From a young age it is very common for youths to be roaming the streets with their hurley in hand, pucking a sliotar (ball) to each other or in the air. Hurling is HUGE in Cork, so the idea of a mature member of An Garda Siochána patrolling the streets, still with his hurley in hand, is a very funny vision.”

After LOTS happening through the previous books and, for reasons I will not divulge, Bunny is ‘presumed’ dead in Ireland but is actually loose in the States looking for Simone, the one woman he ever truly loved. The Quiet Man continues with Bunny’s search for Simone, but at this stage he has a few rather unorthodox friends to give him a hand, including a bunch of nuns from The Sisters of the Saint whose side you do not want to get on the wrong side of. You have been warned!

‘It’s like Jack Reacher if he’d taken more of a shine to the drink’

Now there are many descriptions for Bunny McGarry but that is probably one of my all time favourites. Bunny has literally no filter and no fear. In The Quiet Man Bunny rolls into Stanton, a virtual ghost town located outside Vegas and, in typical Bunny fashion, it is rather a dramatic entrance. For reasons that will become clear Bunny finds himself soon locked up in Longhurst prison.

Meanwhile, Sister Joy, an anarchic member of the motley crew comprising the Sisters of the Saint, is kidnapping a man from his kidnappers with the justification that they need him more. Sister Joy is described as ‘five foot nothing, stoutly built for a chick, and South-east Asian, although she spoke with the deep husky growl of a longshoreman. She wore a leather jacket, Doc Martens and black cargo pants topped off with a nun’s habit over a bald head, Her scowling face was accentuated by a scar that ran down the left side, from just below the eye-socket until it blended into the jawline. The skin there was red and puckered, and she made no effort to conceal it. She also sported a patch over her left eye. It was quite the look’ Sister Joy is on a mission and the Razorbacks, a biker gang led by John Manzano, aka Mad Dog, a gang with a nasty reputation were not going to get in her way. Arthur Faser is her objective, a man who looks very unsuspecting, but has his own rather unique ability, one that the Sisters of the Saint are very anxious to utilise.

With Bunny in prison and Arthur Faser in captivity, a plan begins to take shape.

Caimh McDonnell takes the reader on another wild and highly entertaining adventure with a very rich array of characters that I have come to expect from these novels. Caimh has created a wonderfully eccentric and bullish anti-hero in Bunny McGarry. The man is relentless in his objective, with no sense of fear and with that typical Corkonian wit of seeing humour in every situation. His two sidekicks Diller and Smithy make an always welcome appearance with their loyalty to Bunny very evident at all times. The Quiet Man is a madcap tale continuing the hilarious adventures of Bunny and his buddies. Caimh McDonnell will always take the reader away from the reality of this chaos that we are currently living through. I oft-times say that Bunny McGarry should really be seen on our screens as a real-life character. At one point I was thinking Tommy Tierney but now I’m steering more toward Colm Meaney in the role of this iconic resilient Irish man, who takes no bull from anyone.

The Quiet Man is a warm, funny, chaotic read providing all who love Bunny (& Caimh’s writing) with a much-needed injection of fun. We ALL need to find humour wherever we can at the moment and I can guarantee you will find that in Caimh McDonnell’s words. These books have a large following and there is good reason for this. Packed with a sharp and witty dialogue and added to that a fabulous array of superb and brilliantly depicted characters, Caimh McDonnell has created something very special within the pages of these books.

Mischievous. Imaginative. Witty.

[ Bio ]

Caimh McDonnell is author and writer of televisual treats. Born in Limerick and raised in Dublin, he has taken the hop across the water and now calls Manchester his home.

He is a man who wears many hats. As well as being an author, he is an award-winning writer for TV, a former stand-up comedian. His debut novel, A Man with One of Those Faces was released in 2016. It was nominated for the best novel at the 2017 CAP awards and has hit Amazon bestseller charts on both sides of the Atlantic. It has now become book one in the Dublin Trilogy, along with The Day That Never Comes, Last Orders, and the prequel Angels in the Moonlight (yes, there really are four books in this trilogy). He is also the author of the McGarry Stateside series, Disaster Inc and I Have Sinned, which feature the inimitable Bunny McGarry. I Have Sinned was nominated for the Kindle Storyteller Award 2019.

All are fast-paced crime thrillers and they are laced with distinctly Irish acerbic wit.

Caimh’s TV writing credits include The Sarah Millican Television Programme, A League of Their Own, Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You. He also works as a children’s TV writer and was BAFTA nominated for the animated series ‘Pet Squad’ which he created. He was a winner in the BBC’s Northern Laffs sitcom writing competition, where he was lucky enough to be mentored by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey of ‘Royle Family’ fame.

During his time on the British stand-up circuit, Caimh firmly established himself as the white-haired Irishman whose name nobody could pronounce. He brought the funny worldwide, doing stand-up tours of the Far East, the Middle East and the Near East (Norwich).

He now spends his days writing in his creative lab in his back garden and hanging out with his dog and partner in crime, Diller.

So, all-in-all, he manages to keep himself busy.

Twitter – @Caimh
Facebook – @CaimhMcD