A couple of Irish gangsters head out to the countryside to dispose of the contents of their car trunk, but as often occurs in crime fiction, things go awry. It's a bit slow but kept me interested until the supernatural elements that were slowly introduced came of nothing in the end. Without a proper convergence of the thriller and horror storylines, the ending is just pointless.

My wife and I had a running joke a while back that Irish mob movies are the worst because the characters just do the stupidest things possible in every situation, are generally incompetent, and usually end up just killing each other. Well, this book does nothing to turn my opinion around. ( )

This May release from Image Comics is deeply Irish, using lots of Irish cuss words and ones we in the US think of as swear words...ladies in the audience, "cunt" does not mean the same thing in Ireland!...which you'd do well to consult the Urban Dictionary about as you run across them.

The flat, brutal art and the dark, flat colors are a fine tonal match for the story of Killian, a small-time wise guy and a major fuck-up whose rope has finally run out. The son of a murdered gangster, he followed in his dad's footsteps without the talent for it. It has led to the moment in this story, a brutal life's summation and judgment; it's a morality tale, of course, but it's got a few little grace notes.

Mad Maureen is a sheer delight. Her weird world, the one her nephew Keano, aging in an unforgiving world as "the Bishop"'s enforcer, has made for her. It suits. It really suits. Madness is lonely; Maureen's isn't. She has plenty of company courtesy of Keano.

So at the end of the story, all the chickens come home to roost. There's closure. It's like the closure of a coffin lid, yes, but it's not less satisfying for all that. What it isn't is, well, conventional.

If you're up for a dark and cruel story of consequences and simple but brutal endings, this is your noir jam. Apart from the Irish-slang issues, it's a good solid crime read. ( )