The American Envoy - Softcover

Downey, Garbhan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1906271275 ISBN 13: 9781906271275

Publisher: Guildhall Press, 2010

Synopsis

Money... Power... Drugs... Women. Just another day at the office...

Boston journalist Dave Schumann is in line for a major posting from the US Secretary ofd State. But instead, his big smart mouth gets him exited to Derry, the rainiest city in Ireland.

There, the new envoy is forced to contend with psychotic drug smugglers, a leftie shock-jock who wants to burn him live on air and a renegade security team who are monitoring his every move. Schumann's letters to his father and friends reveal his increasingly precarious - and hilarious - struggle to cope with the most thankless job on earth.

And that's before he discovers there's a spy in the camp who has dark plans for the Presidential visit.

REVIEWS:

'Impossible to put down' Ulster Tatler

'Irresistibly funny' Irish News

About this title

Review:

"[Downey] started publishing brilliant, satirical novels in the early 2000's and his latest one The American Envoy... I was laughing so hard that at several points in the evening my wife reminded me of my "family history of heart attacks". American Envoy is an epistolary novel... it is funny, fast, believable and [at] a brisk 181 pages...it's a great deal."
Adrian McKinty, Irish Author based in Australia
--Up The Downey Staircase: Adrian McKinty's Blog

About the Author:

Garbhan Downey's five previous novels have received widespread acclaim for their biting black humour and insider's understanding of politics in Ireland.

His debut fiction Private Diary of a Suspended MLA (2004) was described in the Sunday Times as "the best Northern Ireland political novel of the century". While his 2008 novel Yours Confidentially: Letters of a would-be MP was listed as one of the Philadelphia Inquirer's top seven International Crime Reads of the Year. His last book, War of the Blue Roses, was columnist Eamonn McCann's Novel of the Year for 2009 and Hughes & Hughes Irish Booksellers Irish Book of the Month in August 2009.

The author has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, newspaper editor and literary editor. He also spent two years as a full-time student politician after graduating from University College Galway in 1987 and was Deputy-President of the Union of Students in Ireland. Downey has lived in Dublin, Galway, Belfast and Boston, but is now happily settled in his native Derry with his wife Una and children Fiachra and Bronagh.

About this edition

• Publisher: Guildhall Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1906271275
• ISBN 13: 9781906271275
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192