In this overly busy and bloody crime thriller from Irish playwright Hughes (Shiver
), Edward Loy, an Irish PI transplanted to L.A., returns home to Dublin for his mother's funeral. A friend's request to locate her missing husband puts Loy on a trail that leads to a corpse found within the foundations of the city's town hall, a notorious family of brothers who head an organized crime ring, heroin funding, numerous murders, possible IRA involvement and much more. When the pace momentarily slackens, the author supplies some nicely observed pastoral views of Dublin and the Irish countryside, but the ongoing cacophony of violence deafens one to all but the most sanguinary details. Hughes has talent, but this caper, his first, doesn't whet one's appetite for more of the same. (Mar.)
