Creatures of Habit

Two boys flee in terror across the grounds of their boarding school, on a night when the rain slices the air like sheets of broken glass and trees bend and groan under gale-force winds. Before midnight one will die, exposing a dark world, centuries old. Emmet Joyce rejects the school's assertion that his son died accidentally. With a Church surrounded by scandal, cover-ups within the Church, and failures to protect children in their care, the priests who run the school no longer command the unquestioning trust of their flock. Emmet trusts only one man to uncover the truth: his cousin, Ed Burke. But Ed is now in Florida, recovering from stress and burn-out in his New York law practice, and a failed attempt to start again in Ireland. Despite his reluctance to return to Ireland, Ed knows that he can't refuse his family at this time of need. So Ed Burke returns again to find that the Ireland of the twenty-first century is still the Ireland of James Joyce where 'Christ and Caesar go hand in glove'. His quest for the truth leads him from Galway and Dublin to Boston and Rome, following a trail enmeshed in one family's desire to occupy the chair of Peter, a desire under threat from that dark world, centuries old. But an avenger stalks the land, one who exacts justice at the end of a rope, one who seeks revenge, not truth. Ed knows that all roads lead to Rome and he also knows that, if he is to uncover what really happened to his cousin's son, he must protect the guilty.
About the Author: Pat Mullan was born in Ireland and has lived in England, Canada and the USA. Formerly a banker, he now lives in Connemara, in the west of Ireland. He has published articles, poetry and short stories in magazines such as Buffalo Spree, Tales of the Talisman, Writers Post Journal. His poetry appears frequently in the Acorn E-zine of the Dublin Writers Workshop. His short story, Galway Girl, was short-listed for the WOW Awards and was published in the new WOW Magazine in Galway in April 2010. It is also one of his short stories that form part of his GALWAY NOIR anthology, available on-line from iPulp Fiction. His two collections of poetry and James Dickey's Poetry: The Religious Dimension, his elegy to Dickey, are all available on-line on Amazon Kindle. Recent work has appeared in the anthology, DUBLIN NOIR, published in the USA by Akashic Books and in Ireland and the UK by Brandon Books and again in 'City-Pick DUBLIN', published by Oxygen Books in 2010 to mark Dublin being chosen as UNESCO'S City of Culture for 2010. His first novel, The Circle of Sodom, received two nominations, one for Best First Novel and one for Best Suspense Thriller, at the 2005 Love Is Murder conference in Chicago. His second novel, Blood Red Square, was published in the US in 2005. His latest novel, Last Days of The Tiger, is now available on-line as an ebook on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Kobo, and elsewhere; it is also available in paperback. He is Ireland Chair of International Thriller Writers, Inc. and he is a member of Mystery Writers of America.