The Convictions of John Delahunt - A Novel - Tapa dura

Historian Hughes puts his knowledge of mid-19th-century Ireland to masterly use in his chilling first novel. This beautifully written tale of cruelty and redemption is as unforgettable as it is harrowing.

Fascinating. A mesmerizing, utterly convincing, utterly sympathetic tale of life in Victorian Dublin. A realistic, complex tale that raises important, topical questions about society, government and morality. And the writing itself is really quite terrific. An exceptional historical mystery.

A Kafkaesque study of an amoral weakling consumed by an unrestrained bureaucracy.

A quite exceptional novel. The world he creates has echoes of Kafka and Orwell. Totally convincing. It draws you in like a trap.--C. J. Sansom, author of Dissolution and Winter in Madrid

Compelling and eerily authentic. Read it and be grateful to be alive in our day and age.--Robert Goddard

Unputdownable. Chillingly portrayed. A highly sophisticated first novel.--Charles Palliser, author of The Quincunx

Extraordinarily detailed world, impeccably researched. So superbly written that it soars as a masterly work of fiction. Utterly compelling.

Just about everything pays off in this engrossing 'Crime and Punishment' style tale. Fascinating. The novel is mean and wicked and really well done.

A remarkable first novel. At once a close character study and a sweeping panorama of 'dissectionists' who buy bodies for medical research and the 'resurrectionists' who dig them up, this fascinating book is a stirring work of fiction and a perceptive chapter in Ireland's social history.--Marilyn Stasio

Andrew Hughes has created an eerily authentic world where one's neighbors cannot be trusted and the authorities even less. John's rapid decline from aimless student to cold-blooded killer is not only chilling, but sophisticated in its telling. Superb.

Dublin, 1841. On a cold December morning, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. This could be just one more small, sad death in a city riven by poverty, inequality and political unrest, but this murder causes a public outcry. For it appears the culprit - a feckless student named John Delahunt - is also an informant in the pay of the authorities at Dublin Castle. And strangely, this young man seems neither to regret what he did, nor fear his punishment. Indeed, as he awaits the hangman in his cell in Kilmainham Gaol, John Delahunt decides to tell his story in this, his final, deeply unsettling statement...Based on true events that convulsed Victorian Ireland, The Convictions of John Delahunt is the tragic tale of a man who betrays his family, his friends, his society and, ultimately, himself. Set amidst Dublin's taverns, tenements, courtrooms, and alleyways and with a rich, Dickensian cast of characters, this enthralling, at times darkly humorous novel brilliantly evokes a time and a place, and introduces a remarkable new literary voice.