A Man With One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell - PPPP

Paul Mulchrone has one of those faces that are so ordinary and ambiguous that you could mistake him for your nephew. Which patients at the hospital he volunteers at do all time.

When a case of this intentional mistaken identity leads to him being stabbed by an elderly man on his deathbed, he becomes embroiled in one of the most famous cases in Irish criminal history. An unsolved, high-profile crime that went cold 30 years ago.

Together with Nurse Brigit, they are suddenly the target of an unknown enemy and must solve the case to save their lives.

McDonnell is a skilled writer who kicks the story off with a barrage of masterful character descriptions like, she wouldn’t be launching a thousand ships any time soon but she’d undoubtedly create a fair bit of interest in a chip shop queue.

He also weaves in clever turns of phrase like, In the meantime, he was dotting the ‘I’s and crossing the ‘T’s, waiting for the S and the H to show up.

And he peppers the book with humorous little gems like, You learn a lot about yourself in a crisis. Paul learned he could definitely bring himself to kick a cat.

McDonnell also does a good job creating distinctive characters. Paul is sympathetic, defiant, and a little offbeat, while Brigit is caring, smart, and adventurous. It’s with Bunny McGarry, however, that McDonnell really succeeds in painting a particularly interesting character. He’s a hard-drinking detective sergeant who is a local legend with an unconventional brand of community policing. He’s complicated and rife with both flaws and virtues. He’s shrewd, belligerent, and thoroughly entertaining. Definitely a character to write a series around.

However, not all of the characters that McDonnell creates are as interesting or entertaining. Some can be downright annoying. Like Dorothy, the wealthy octogenarian. She has an irritating habit of cleaning up her bad language by changing the first letter of all curse words to begin with an ‘m’ as follows. “Don’t you hello me. If that cat of yours mhits on my mucking lawn again, I’m shooting the little munt!” We’ve seen this trait in other books and it’s never a positive. It’s much more a unibrow or vestigial tail than supple breasts or ice chip blue eyes. For the love of God, please stop doing this, writers!

While McDonnell is clearly witty and humorous, I actually did not laugh out loud very often. I’m putting this down as an expectations problem, though. I found the book because it is currently ranked #1 on the Amazon Dark Humor best sellers list, so I figured there would be a good amount of LOLs. But going back and reading the book description, it is clearly billed as a thriller mystery with some wit thrown in on the side.

Looking back with that in mind, there are many areas and lines that could definitely elicit lols. If you go into it thinking thriller and mystery, and then you get even a little comedy that you hadn’t expected, all of sudden it’s hilarious. It’s like if you order a plain cheese pizza and when you open the box, you find yourself a cheese pizza with meatballs. No, that’s not quite right. It would be like getting the cheese pizza, cause that’s what you wanted, but with a blow job on the side. Now that’s a pizza that you tell your friends about.

In addition, McDonnell’s quality is a bit uneven. He starts off very strong, but in the middle, there are a few lulls and an occasional issue with tone. For instance, there was this line at a relatively dramatic point. He had only the briefest of moments to look confused, before he got maced, right in his great big stupid face. It definitely feels like McDonnell let his four-year-old write that climax. But he finishes strong toward the end where I enjoyed my three kinda lols.

In addition to the action and mystery, there is also some romantic friction thrown in which McDonnell builds up quite skillfully.

The ending was satisfactory, I guess, kinda like this here ending to my review. I guess. Or I hope? Yeah, I’d definitely be happy with satisfactory, so I hope this is doing it for you. Like kinda.

Anyhoo, to sum up, A Man With One of Those Faces succeeds with clever writing and a dynamic and unforgettable character in Bunny McGarry. It is a solid action mystery, and if you go into it thinking of it as such, you might just find it to be very funny as well. 3.5 pearls rounded up to 4. Why not.