The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley by Jeremy Massey Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“This misery of a gig called life is just a dream from which we all eventually awaken, he said. Nobody gets left behind. Even the most horrible dreams end.”- The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley, Jeremy Massey

Paddy Buckley is a grieving widower who has worked for years for Gallagher’s, a long-established—some say the best—funeral home in Dublin. One night driving home after an unexpected encounter with a client, Paddy hits a pedestrian crossing the street. He pulls over and gets out of his car, intending to do the right thing. As he bends over to help the man, he recognizes him. It’s Donal Cullen, brother of one of the most notorious mobsters in Dublin. And he’s dead.

Shocked and scared, Paddy jumps back in his car and drives away before anyone notices what’s happened.

The next morning, the Cullen family calls Gallagher’s to oversee the funeral arrangements. Paddy, to his dismay, is given the task of meeting with the grieving Vincent Cullen, Dublin’s crime boss, and Cullen’s entourage. When events go awry, Paddy is plunged into an unexpected eddy of intrigue, deceit, and treachery.

By turns a thriller, a love story, and a black comedy of ill manners, The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley is a surprising, compulsively readable debut novel.

Every so often, one comes across a book that he swears was made for him. The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley is that for me. A funeral director main character. Organized crime. Black comedy. An international setting that also happens to be the same place my favorite series of this year is set in. Prose evocative of my favorite contemporary writer of all time, Markus Zusak. Even some particularly messed up moments. The writer is even an Irishman living in Australia! How the hell did it take me so long to find this book?

Also, Jeremy Massey was called, in one review, the Irish Carl Hiaasen. Growing up, Hiaasen's YA/children's novels were some of my favorite books out there- especially Flush (I should really dig that book out again). If I had any reservations about reading it before I definitely didn't after reading that comparison.

Not since Marina have I read a book so easy for me to fall in love with. It just has everything that works for me, a great plot line, awesome characters, a fantastic writing style. So why didn't it get the same high grade Marina got? Well, mostly because the book does have some flaws that were a bit too obvious for me to fully love this book. Like, I wasn't crazy about the sometimes random POV changes. They were a necessity, I get it, but I still found it jarring to go from a quite pleasant first person narrative to suddenly jump to Jack or Geno or Vincent or whoever with little warning. That could have been done better. I also wasn't too keen on the love story between Paddy and Brigid (though I admit the ending makes up for it). Those things annoyed me just enough to knock it down from a full 9 out of 10 to an 8.5-9. 

I brought up Markus Zusak because Paddy Buckley reminded me strongly of Ed Kennedy in I Am the Messenger, which as you know holds the title of my favorite contemporary of all time. I don't even know how to describe it except by saying that they both have a very... pleasant narrative style and strike me as the kind of people you'd get on with well in real life. They seem realistic, too, dealing with the often strange situations they find themselves in the same way people would in real life and, while they aren't impervious to fear, they have a calmness about them you could respect. If you can't tell by that, I really liked Paddy Buckley and could read three more books following him around (though I think this works quite well as a standalone and wouldn't necessarily want a sequel). 

As is often the case when I really enjoy a book, I have little to say about it. The book just worked for me. It's not by any means fine literature, but it's a ton of fun to read and one that will definitely make an appearance on my end of the year best of list. 

8.5-9 out of 10