The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley

April 27, 2015
Massey's intelligent and suspenseful debut novel finds Irish undertaker Paddy Buckley up to his silk-lined casket in trouble with his libido and conscience, while desperately dodging Dublin's most notorious crime boss, who wants to put Paddy in the ground with the rest of his customers. Paddy is a hapless undertaker at Gallagher's Funeral Directors whose life quickly becomes a series of messy disasters. As he carnally comforts an attractive widow, she suddenly drops dead, leaving Paddy scrambling to cover his tracks and save his career. Then while driving home late that night, preoccupied with the threat of professional scandal and disgrace, Paddy strikes and kills a pedestrian with his car. The dead man is Dublin gangster Donal Cullen, brother of Vincent Cullen, the most vicious criminal in Ireland. Paddy panics and flees the scene, fearing the vengeance of a sadistic thug. Now he has a dead widow and a dead gangster on his mind, and he is assigned to conduct the funeral arrangements for both without revealing his guilt. Paddy matches wits with the suspicious Vincent, who vows brutal revenge on his brother's killer. Scenes of dark comedy and ruthless brutality follow, as Paddy tries to keep both secrets and stay alive. A hilarious funeral home scam and a quirky dead body mix-up add to this exciting, morbid tale.

April 1, 2015
A man working for a Dublin funeral home runs afoul of one of Ireland's top gangsters in this dark, comic, and sometimes-romantic debut. The Paddy of the title, age 42, is having an awful half-week, starting with sleeping problems caused by memories of his pregnant wife's sudden death, and loss of the child, two years ago. He manages, though, to brush aside his grief and professional ethics when his dealings with a newly widowed 60-year-old woman develop rather quickly into sex and she experiences both the small and large deaths. Covering his involvement in this fresh piece of business-the autopsy's a big threat, "with my DNA lining Lucy's birth canal"-warms him up for several days of fatality, snafu, and deception. The peak, or nadir, is a car accident in which he kills one of the country's most violent criminals, sneaks off, and then has to discuss the funeral arrangements with his even nastier brother. Paddy also manages to get involved with the willing widow's equally willing daughter when it comes time to discuss details for what is now a double funeral (maybe the movie will be called Funeral Crashers). That grief might galvanize the libido is at least more plausible than the mystical tricks Paddy's father taught him about leaving his body or hypnotizing vicious dogs-in this case a cross of fox, wolf, and Alsatian. An undertaker himself, Massey throws in interesting and quite believable sidebars on embalming, corpse-dressing, and cremation. Personal experience probably lies behind one of the funeral home's funnier mess-ups and the need to convince a bunch of angry Irish mourners that a closed casket is the best way to go. Highly readable and entertaining, though far-fetched in key moments, the novel benefits especially from Massey's mostly restrained, deadpan Irish sense of humor.

May 15, 2015
Widower Paddy Buckley is a trusted and respected employee of Gallagher's, one of Dublin's most prominent funeral homes, and his work is all that keeps him from surrendering to the grief brought on by his pregnant wife's fatal hemorrhage. After a late-night pickup of a remains, Paddy drives off in a lashing rainstorm without turning on his headlights. He strikes and kills a pedestrian who proves to be Donal Cullen, brother of Vincent, the most dangerous gangster in Ireland. Paddy speeds away from the scene knowing that if he is identified as Donal's killer, his death will be agonizingly painful and slow. Of course, Vincent Cullen selects Gallagher's, and Paddy is assigned to visit Vincent and make the arrangements. First-novelist Massey, a third-generation Dublin undertaker turned screenwriter, stitches together an unlikely tale of death, love, friendship, loyalty, violence, and contemporary funerary practice. By turns, his story is sad, sweet spirited, insightful, tender, violent, and even funny. It will interest fans of hard-boiled thrillers who harbor a secret soft spot in their hearts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)