THE COLOUR OF BLOOD is the second Ed Loy novel by Declan Hughes, the first being The Wrong Kind of Blood, published in 2006.Ed Loy is a Private Investigator in current day Dublin, Ireland - a place that's part gritty, poor, desperate and part rich, privileged, twisted. Shane Howard is a Dublin dentist, and the son of Dr John Howard, a pillar of Dublin Irish Society, famous in the local area, with a legacy that is maintained by his family. Shane's 19 year old daughter Emily has gone missing and now he is getting blackmail threats and sexually explicit photographs of her - Shane is not sure if she's being abused or if she's a willing participant.What starts off as a fairly straight-forward job locating the missing Emily and tracking down the source of the photographs rapidly gets more and more complicated as digging around in the Howard family starts to reveal a lot of skeletons in everyone's closets.There are a few reasons why you'd wonder if this was a good book or not. There's the tortured, embittered, lost, hard-drinking PI in Ed but for many reasons he may teeter on the edge of the cliché, but he never quite tips over. There's the wealthy, seemingly successful Howard family, rotten to the core with all sorts of secrets and tacky goings on, but stereotypical in many ways, however there's something engaging, human, interesting in many of the members of that family.There are a lot of subplots in THE COLOUR OF BLOOD. As Emily is found and the blackmailers are being tracked down, there are events in and surrounding the family from years ago, leading up to current day, that are rapidly revealed. The book roars along at a rapid pace with revelation and resolution overlapping themselves at every twist.There's also a great sense of irony, of gentle humour, the cast of characters certainly help with that. The dentist Shane, whose Medical Doctor father never quite "approved" of his choice of career. Sandra, the Irish Princess, sister of Shane, family manipulator, she of the vaguely Gothic look, swooping down from the family estates to rescue Emily and her son Jonathan. Jonathan and his purposely put on private school boy touches. None of these humorous touches are overdone but they balance the brutality of many of the other aspects of the novel.Finally, there's a great sense of place in THE COLOUR OF BLOOD. Current day Dublin with its wealth, opportunity, developers and 21st century values are contrasted brutally against the greed, exploitation, societal manipulation, hypocrisy, criminal gangs, drugs and violence. And ultimately that's the crux of the whole book - if something's rotten at the core, then it doesn't matter a damn where that something is positioned on the social scale - the damage lingers and it will come back to bite you.
"Nothing's ever what it is, it's always bound up with something else, something that happened in the past." This is a quote from Declan Hughes' "The Color of Blood" but it could as well have been a summary of the main theme in novels written by an American mystery writer, Ross Macdonald. When I was reading the first two chapters I felt as if I were reading a new book by the author of "The Chill" and "The Underground Man", one of my most favorite mystery authors. I fell in love with the first half of "The Color of Blood". Reading a Ross Macdonald's novel happening in Dublin, Ireland, in 2006 was an unexpected treat. In addition to interesting plot, the novel invited comparisons between Southern California society of the 1950s and 1960s and that of Ireland of the 2000s.Ed Loy, a private investigator in Dublin, is hired by Shane Howard, a rich and powerful man, to find his 19-year old daughter whose pornographic pictures are being used as a blackmail tool. The case soon becomes much more complex; several people are murdered, and connections to the past of the Howard family emerge. Mr. Loy is very much like Lew Archer of Macdonald's novels: a PI with strong moral principles and a heart of gold who is able to respond to violence with violence and who is inclined to take law into his own hands. The case investigated by Mr. Loy, like Lew Archer's cases, is about what powerful people can do to less powerful people; how they can destroy their lives just because they can.My enthusiasm about "The Color of Blood" gradually decreased as I kept reading. What was a great four-star novel after first few chapters, a good three-star book by about the mid-point, totally collapsed into a ridiculously overblown, overcomplicated, and way overlong mess. The plot became so bizarrely convoluted in the last 80 or so pages that I felt it bordered on the absurd. I had a hard time to force myself to finish reading the novel that began so wonderfully promising. One of the main differences between a great writer and a not-so-great one is that the former knows when to stop writing.Two and a quarter stars.
Do You like book The Color Of Blood (2007)?
Wow. For starters, I hardly predicted anything. And even better, I didn't want to. This book was full of so many great twists and turns, but it was never confusing or unbelievable. I really liked Ed Loy, and the homage his character pays to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. In fact, the sexual disfunction of the characters reminded me of The Big Sleep, Mildred Pierce, and of course, Chinatown. But since Hughes is writing in the 21st century, he can be much more blatant than Chandler or Cain was able
—Grace
Another dark and violent tale from Ireland. In this second book in the series Ed Loy is adjusting to life back in Dublin working as a PI but still without his official license. Just like the first book he is involved with lots of sordid characters with even deeper and darker secrets. This time instead of his family he's dealing with a rich family of doctors that is pretty sexually depraved. Lots of action and a climbing body count as Ed crosses back and forth between what's legal and illegal and perhaps damaging his reputation in the process. It was quite confusing keeping track of the many sordid characters in this one family. You needed a genealogy chart as there were half brothers and then names were changed. Ok, who is this guy again and what's his beef? And just when you think you had it figured out more surprises. Multiple murders and multiple killers. Hoping the next one is somewhat different.
—Chris
I really enjoyed this – like his first book, that were very many characters and sometimes it was hard to keep track of everyone, but as the story unfolded, I found myself deeply involved in fascinated. I like this better than his first book, because it was more original – I haven't really read a book like it before, though I've read very many mysteries – it was all about the strange relationships and twisted past of this very wealthy family. I had a hard time finding the characters likable, except for Ed Loy, the detective – and Tommy, his dysfunctional sidekick – but the characters grew on me eventually, and even the ones I didn't like, I was interested in their strange histories. Most of it was like a soap opera in a sense, but I found it satisfying in the conclusion was exciting and interesting. My only negative criticism really is that I couldn't figure out why Loy stuck with the family as long as he did – why was he so loyal to them, when they were rather condescending and nasty to him, why was he so drawn to them and so emotionally attached to what happened to them? It didn't seem realistic, and that is why I'm giving this only 4 stars instead of 5.
—Sarah
