Irish Times Review

The Irish Times published a review of Wolves of Eden in last Saturday's Weekend edition.

Crime Landscapes of US Frontier, Hypnosis, Big Pharma and Galway

Novels from Kevin McCarthy, Tanya Farrelly, Fiona Gartland, Nessa O’Mahony and Ken Bruen

Sat, Dec 1, 2018, 06:00

Declan Burke

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Kevin McCarthy’s first two novels, Irregulars and Peeler, were set against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War, but Wolves of Eden (WW Norton, €14.99) opens in the wake of the American civil war, with the psychologically scarred Union Army veteran Lieut Molloy dispatched to Fort Phil Kearny in the Dakota Territory to “put boots on the gallows” – ie, investigate the apparent murder of the fort’s sutler and his wife. Molloy being an alcoholic determined to drink himself to death, the investigation is largely conducted by his second-in-command, Sergeant Kohn; woven through Kohn’s attempts to penetrate the code of omerta that pertains at Fort Kearny is a rambling, semi-literate confession written by Michael O’Driscoll, an Irish immigrant who has served with the Union Army during the recent war.

Wolves of Eden

A compelling tale of men who were “chucked into the roaring flames of history”, Wolves of Eden is superbly detailed in its depiction of frontier soldiering, with Fort Kearny besieged by Chief Red Cloud and the story playing out against the events which led to the Fetterman Massacre of 1866. Flashing with shards of coal-black humour – Michael’s brother Tom, shot in the face at the battle of Chickamauga, has “a face that would make a funeral turn from a main road” – Wolves of Eden is a brutal, blood-soaked and unsentimental account of the Old West that bears comparison with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

Wolves of Eden Selected as One of Amazon's 20 Best Books of 2018

Wow...even more delighted to announce that Wolves of Eden has been selected by Amazon as one of its 20 Best Books of 2018 as well as one of its 20 Best Books Literature & Fiction. Happy Days! A real honour to be in the company of such amazing books.

Wolves of Eden a Book of the Month November 2018 Editor's Pick on Amazon

Delighted to announce that Wolves of Eden has been selected as an Editor's Pick for Book of the Month, November 2018 on Amazon. And a real honour to be on the same list as Michael Connolly and Stephen King. I've been reading King since I could read at all and Michael Connelly's Bosch novels were a real influence on my O'Keefe novels.

Out now in all good...and not so good...bookshops and on Amazon

The Civil War may be over, but in this thrilling historical novel,the battle for the West is only just beginning...

Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort’s politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers and return with “boots for the gallows” to appease powerful figures back in Washington.  The men journey west to a distant outpost in a valley at once beautiful and savage, where the soldiers inside the fort—from Irish Fenian rebels to anti-immigrant nativists—prove to be violently opposed to their investigations.

Meanwhile, unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, Irish immigrant brothers and Civil War veterans, Michael and Thomas O’Driscoll, reenlist in the army and are shipped west to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley.  Here they are thrown into ferocious combat with Red Cloud’s coalition of Native tribes fighting American expansion into their hunting grounds.  Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle—a moment that will change their lives forever.

Blending intimate historical detail and emotional acuity, Wolves of Eden sets these four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the injustice of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.

“Kevin McCarthy is a fresh voice, and a keen one. This Irish thriller writer has ventured boldly into a new continent and a new history. His place is the American West in the 1860s, when the long sad carnage was winding its grim way toward Wounded Knee. With this story of profound tragedy, his new readers will be many.” -- Larry McMurtry, author of The Last Kind Words Saloon

“When it comes to saturation-level historical authenticity—the sense of being there, alive and at large in the vanished past—I think Kevin McCarthy is in the company of masters like Patrick O’Brian and Hilary Mantel. Wolves of Eden is also a shiningly humane novel...about the immigrant soldiers who found themselves on the front lines during the harrowing seizure of the American West.” --Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and A Friend of Mr. Lincoln

McCarthy has a fine sense of voice and period detail, but it's the well-drawn characters and riveting scenes that make this novel memorable.--Kirkus Reviews

Set in late 1866 amid Red Cloud’s War in the Dakota Territory, McCarthy’s third novel is a historically rich blend of mystery, morality, and brutal frontier warfare...Though not for the squeamish, this is a riveting and propulsive mystery.--Publisher's Weekly