The Last Resort

In his sequel to The Neon Madonna , Irish writer Binchy attempts to build a comedy around an American developer's real-estate scheming in rural Ireland, but the humor falls flat. Vacationing abroad because bank examiners back home in the U.S. are breathing down his neck, Luke Divareli stops in Brulagh, a fictional Irish village under the misrule of an old Anglo-Irish family and a local politician named Mick Flannery. When he realizes that the breathtaking, totally undeveloped Brulagh landscape is just a short distance from Shannon Airport, Luke plans to build a hotel and marina there. He is opposed on the sly by Father Jerry O'Sullivan, a seemingly ordinary parish priest whose past as a Vatican Bank insider makes him keener about financial matters than he appears. The novel never breaks loose from a stale comic tone that combines the worst of J. P. Donleavy and the 19th-century Irish stories coauthored by Edith Somerville and Martin Ross. Binchy's patronizing manner extends to horse racing, fox hunting and Gaelic football, and the country-house scenes are neither funny nor believable. (Mar.)