Tristram Shandy

Lewis Burke Frumkes, one of America's very best satirists, sharpens his pen on the fads, fears, and fashions of the urban landscape. Here are 49 hilarious ways to cope with them. Explore the benefits of aerobic typing. Wile a friend with "Exotic Gifts from Harry and Larry" including "Road Imperial Valium—America's Favorite Tranquilizer—Only Better." Take charge of your next meeting with Frumkes's "New Rules of Order," which include Blurting, Interrupting, and Bullwhipping. Jump in the saddle and rope a roach—apartment style. And, of course, raise your I.Q. with a delicious "Gifted Child Fricassee."

Laying low in South America, Michael has been running security for the Miraflores Hilton in Lima, Peru, juggling temperamental tourists, irksome dignitaries, and the occasional lady of the night. But Michael's colorful life in Lima comes to a violent halt with the arrival of two Colombian hit men who trap him in one of the hotel's rooms and force him at gunpoint to take a call from Bridget Callaghan in Ireland.

Michael and Bridget have a lot of history. For one, they used to be lovers. For another, Michael killed Bridget's husband. Bridget offers Michael a terrible choice: come find my daughter, or my men will kill you -- now.

Michael arrives in Dublin on Bloomsday, June 16th, the date that James Joyce's Ulysses takes place -- but whether this coincidence augurs well for him or foretells his end can't yet be known. In the span of this single day, he penetrates the heart of an IRA network, is kidnapped, escapes, then worms his way into the criminal underground in search of the missing girl. Never certain who to trust, Michael keeps his revolver close at hand -- and doesn't hesitate to use it -- outsmarting at every turn any number of determined would-be assassins.

Before the day is out, on a windswept ocean cliff, Michael finds himself face-to-face with the kidnappers as well as the lovely and murderous Bridget. It is there that he must finally confront a series of shocking truths -- not just about others but, above all, about himself as well.

Riveting, violent, witty, and lyrical, The Bloomsday Dead is vintage McKinty. Packed with crackling dialogue and one-of-a-kind characters, here is an unforgettable new crime novel from a master of literary suspense and the author of The Dead Yard, which Publishers Weekly named one of the fifteen best novels of 2006.

Burned-out private dick Michael McGill needs to jump-start his career. What he gets instead is a cattle prod to the crotch. The president's heroin-addicted chief of staff wants McGill to find the Constitution—the real one the Founding Fathers secretly devised for the time of gravest crisis. And with God, civility, and Mom's homemade apple pie already dead or dying, that time is now. But McGill has a talent for stumbling into every imaginable depravity—and this case is driving him even deeper into America's darkest, dankest underbelly, toward obscenities that boggle even his mind.