The Convictions of John Delahunt - Softcover

Hughes, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781620156 ISBN 13: 9781781620151

Publisher: Doubleday Ireland, 2013

Synopsis

On a cold December morning in 1841, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. But when the people of Dublin learn why John Delahunt committed this vile crime, the outcry leaves no room for compassion. His fate is sealed, but this feckless Trinity College student and secret informer for the authorities in Dublin Castle seems neither to regret what he did nor fear his punishment. Sitting in Kilmainham Gaol in the days leading up to his execution, Delahunt tells his story in a final, deeply unsettling statement...Dublin in the mid-19th century was a city on the edge - a turbulent time of suspicion and mistrust and the scent of rebellion against the Crown in the air, beautifully written, brilliantly researched and with a seductive sense of period and place, this unnervingly compelling novel boasts a colourful assortment of characters: from carousing Trinity students, unscrupulous lowlifes and blackmailers to dissectionists, phrenologists and sinister agents of Dublin Castle who are operating according to their own twisted rules. And at its heart lie the doomed John Delahunt and Helen, his wife. Unconventional, an aspiring-writer and daughter of an eminent surgeon, she pursued Delahunt, married him and thereby ruined her own life. And as for Delahunt himself, we follow him from elegant ballrooms and tenement houses to taverns, courtrooms and to the impoverished alleyways where John Delahunt readily betrays his friends, his society and ultimately, himself.

About this title

Book Description

Set in Dublin in the 1840s and based on the true story of the murder of a child, this dazzling literary debut - at once a historical novel and crime thriller - will appeal to fans of Andrew Taylor, Andrew Miller and Peter Ackroyd.

From the Back Cover

Dublin, 1841.

On a cold December morning, a boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. In a city riven by poverty and political unrest, this murder causes an outcry. For it seems the culprit - a feckless student named John Delahunt - is also an informant and in the pay of the spymasters at Dublin Castle. As he awaits the hangman, Delahunt decides to tell his story in this, his final, deeply unsettling statement . . .

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday Ireland
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1781620156
• ISBN 13: 9781781620151
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352