A Quick Review Roundup

You know what the hardest thing about daily blogging is? Remembering to bloody do it. Anyway...

Early reviews for THE TWELVE are starting to creep in. Here are a few highlights:

Just today, Gerard Brennan posted his thoughts over at Crime Scene NI. Gerard mentions, as a few people have, the genre hopping aspects of the book. Yes, it's a thriller first and foremost, but there are paranormal and horror elements in there too. The review also touches on the book's politics, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

And yesterday, of course, I linked to my friend Betsy Dornbusch's review. Then there's the inimitable Josephine Damian's take on things, which I've just realised I hadn't linked to from this blog until now. I linked it from Facebook and so on, but neglected to do it here. That was very remiss of me, so apologies to Josie, particularly in light of her kind words.

There have also been five star reviews cropping up at Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones.com (be sure to click on "Read all customer reviews"), and Play.com, arising from the proof copies sent out by he excellent marketing and publicity folks at CCV/Random House.

I said I'd come back to Gerard's points on politics: Over recent days I've been doing little bits and pieces of publicity work, answering questions, writing small pieces for websites and newspapers. People have started to raise the issue of THE TWELVE's politics. I'm told on the grapevine that some press reviews are going to highlight that aspect.

I never intended THE TWELVE to be a polemic. But there's no getting away from that side of the story; everything about Northern Ireland is political, whether we like it or not. So, at some point in the coming days I'm going to tackle this issue directly. It's not going to be easy, seeing as controversy is intrinsic to politics in this part of the world. But I want to air the topic and perhaps give a better picture of the novel's background. Until then, however, I think Betsy Dornbusch's line is my favourite: "THE TWELVE is the conscience of Northern Ireland."

I wouldn't put it quite so emphatically or dramatically, but the novel is, right down at its core, about guilt. More to follow...