"All the Rage"

A tale of two sides, crooked cops and criminals.

By Jay L.

            Irish born writer Gene Kerrigan brings people to his homeland with his writing.  Kerrigan's book, The Rage, is a crime novel told from multiple perspectives.  The story follows a crooked detective Bob Tidey, who tampers with evidence to get his man, and Vincent Naylor, a criminal who turns to revenge.

            Bob Tidey is a cigarette smoking, heavy drinking cop in the Dublin police force.  He gets called in to help out with a big murder case of a millionaire banker.  He was brought in because the murder weapon in this case is the same as a case he covered almost two years prior and his purpose is to try to find a connection between the two.  

Switch over to Vincent Naylor who is a former criminal who just got out of jail for kicking a guy in the face.  In an attempt to better his life he plans a bank heist with his brother and two other friends to do the job.  After the job Vincent plans on getting revenge on the people that did him and his brother wrong in their life and then to flee the country.

Gene Kerrigan writes the story in his Irish dialect and at first if not familiar it is hard to understand.  However, after reading the first few chapters you begin to understand what everything means.  The story also switches back and forth between a few perspectives so you must pay attention or else you will be really confused.  Kerrigan's ability to develop his characters and sway you one way and then the other and to make you like a character with huge flaws is incredible.  The book does begin slowly and it does take some perseverance to get through it but when you do you will be thankful you did and then ending is a little anti-climactic but all and all, the book was a really good read.

This was the first of Kerrigan's book that I read and he has a few more books out that I didn't know about.  I plan on going back and reading some of his other work after reading this book.  I enjoyed reading this book and I believe that you should read The Rage too.

The Rage, by Gene Kerrigan, Europa Editions, 2011, 313 pages