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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

THE ANGEL OF THE STREETLAMPS

Sean Moncrieff

When Manda Ferguson falls out of an apartment window to her death, the story is on all the front pages. But then her death starts to have an effect on the living.

Baz: the man accused of killing her has to decide whether or not to turn himself in.
Maurice: the taxi driver who inadvertently helped Baz escape wrestles with whether he should mete out his own form of justice.
Rachel: the failing election candidate who has to choose between giving up or speaking her mind.
Michael: the priest who administered the last rites to Manda and who is finally forced to confront his true (dis)beliefs. Carol: Manda's cousin. A tabloid reporter on the verge of losing her job who begins to discover some curious gaps in her memory

But the effect travels even further than these five intersecting stories when claims are made that Manda's ‘spirit' is appearing beneath lampposts. In an economically devastated Ireland, where people have lost faith in politics, in business or religion, each character strives to answer the question: when there's nothing left to believe in, what can we believe?

Sean Moncrieff's first novel, Dublin, a needle-sharp, funny and scathing thriller, was published in 2001 by Doubleday and reached the bestseller lists in Ireland. A non-fiction book, Stark Raving Rulers: twenty minor despots of the twenty-first century, was published in 2004, followed by God, A Users' Guide in 2006. A second novel, The History of Things, was published in 2007. Sean hosts Moncrieff, an award winning radio show every afternoon on Newstalk in Ireland, and works on a new non-fiction book, The Irish, commissioned by Gill & Macmillan (for publication in 2015).
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Published 2023-05-11 by Ireland: New Island

Comments

"The writing is snappy and stylish, and his dialogue is spot-on."

"There is mystery, death and love in The Angel of the Streetlamps; there are wolves and there are sheep. Seán Moncrieff presents us with a cacophony of genuine voices strutting their views on politics, religion and class wars. Moncrieff is a master of the vicious aside, the canny comment and the funny twist, and he brings insight and intelligence to this novel of a damaged, confused and all too recognisable 21st century Ireland."

"It's thoughtful and dark, even cynical, in its dissection of how a single crime reverberates throughout Irish society."

"A riveting read"