Dead I Well May Be - Softcover

McKinty's thriller settles into an action groove. No wonder Steve Traffic Gaghan has bought it to film (Uncut)

A pacy, assured and thoroughly engaging debut... this is a hard-boiled crime story written by a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips (Sunday Independent)

Adrian McKinty is a big new talent - for storytelling, for dialogue and for creating believable characters... It's a riveting story of revenge and marks the arrival of a fresh new voice (Susanna Yager Sunday Telegraph)

Carrickfergus-born Adrian McKinty... looks set to make quite a splash with Dead I Well May Be, a darkly poetic tale set among Irish gangs in pre-Giuliani New York (Irish Times)

Evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch (Guardian)

An astonishingly confident debut from a writer to watch (Irish Independent)

Careens boisterously from Belfast to the Bronx... McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream. Top-drawer (Kirkus Reviews)

Dead I Well May Be is a startling, dark poem of a thriller that takes you to the heart of New York City's most bloody era. McKinty writes with élan, and his dialogue is as hard and true as the streets. His hero's quest for vengeance and redemption kept me reading into the loneliest hours of the night. McKinty is the real deal (Thomas Kelly, Author of The Rackets and Payback)

McKinty's Michael Forsythe is a crook, a deviant, a lover, a fighter, and a thinker. His Irish-tough language of isolation and longing makes us love and trust him despite his oh-so-great and violent flaws. When you finish this book you just might wish you'd lived the life in its pages, and thought its thoughts, both horrible and sublime (Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead)

If Frank McCourt had gone into the leg-breaking business instead of school teaching, he might've written a book like Dead I Well May Be. Adrian McKinty's novel is a rollicking, raw, and unsavoury delight - down and dirty but full of love for words. This is hard-boiled crime fiction with a poet's touch (Peter Blauner, author of The Last Good Day and The Intruder)

An illegal immigrant escaping the troubles in Belfast, young Michael Forsythe is strong and clever and fearless ? just the fellow to be tapped by crime boss Darkey White to lead a gang of Irish thugs against the rising Dominican powers in Harlem and the Bronx. The time is pre-Giuliani New York, when crack rules the city and hundreds are murdered every month. Michael and his lads tumble through the streets, shaking down victims, drinking hard, and fighting block by bloody block. Soon Darkey anoints Michael his rising star. But when Michael seduces his boss?s girl, the saucy, fickle Bridget, things quickly go south ? south to Mexico, that is. Double-crossed and left to die in a Mexican prison, Michael plots his return to New York, there to wreak terrible vengeance on his betrayers. A natural storyteller with a gift for dialogue, McKinty delivers the explosive underworld of organised crime, complete with Irish lilt.