Absolute Zero Cool

Absolute Zero Cool is a post-modern take on the crime thriller genre. Adrift in the half-life limbo of an unpublished novel, hospital porter Billy needs to up the stakes. Euthanasia simply isn't shocking anymore; would blowing up his hospital be enough to see Billy published, or be damned? What follows is a gripping tale that subverts the crime genre's grand tradition of liberal sadism, a novel that both excites and disturbs in equal measure. Absolute Zero Cool is not only an example of Irish crime writing at its best; it is an innovative, self-reflexive piece that turns every convention of crime fiction on its head. Declan Burke's latest book is an imaginative story that explores the human mind's ability to both create and destroy, with equally devastating effects.


Genre: Mystery

"A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny, a cross between Flann O'Brien and Raymond Chandler." - John Banville

"If you want to find something new and challenging, comic crime fiction is now the place to go; Declan Burke [is] at the vanguard of a new wave of young writers kicking against the clichés and producing ambitious, challenging, genre-bending works..." - Colin Bateman

"Absolute Zero Cool is unlike anything else you'll read this year... laugh-out-loud funny... this is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone... A feat of extraordinary alchemy." - Ken Bruen

"Stop waiting for Godot - he's here. Declan Burke takes the existential dilemma of characters writing themselves and turns it on its ear, and then some. He gives it body and soul; an Irish soul." - Reed Farrel Coleman

"Among all the recent crop of Irish crime novelists, it seems to me that Declan Burke is ideally poised to make the transition to a larger international stage." - John Connolly

"Burke has written a deep, lyrical and moving crime novel; an intoxicating and exciting novel of which the master himself, Flann O Brien, would be proud..." - Adrian McKinty