Product Description

Emily Howard is nineteen years old, slim and petite with a pale complexion and a red rose tattoo. She is also missing. She disappeared three days ago, and now her father has been sent photographs of her naked body. He is desperate to find her.
So he calls Ed Loy, a private investigator who knows the dark streets of Dublin better than most; a man who will find Emily Howard within twenty-four hours. But locating Emily turns out to be only the beginning. Within hours, Emily’s ex-boyfriend is found murdered, and Loy finds himself in a race against time to catch a killer – and to unearth the many dark secrets the Howard family have kept long buried.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #719763 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
‘To call Declan Hughes "a natural" is to engage in understatement’ (Douglas Kennedy )

‘Declan Hughes breathes new life into the private detective story’

(Michael Connelly )

This is a writer who has clearly immersed himself in the PI tradition and has given it a new spin … this series is finally starting to motor’

 

(Sharon Wheeler, Reviewing the evidence.com )

‘The story goes at a fast pace, with a cast of vivdly-drawn characters, and, above all, a great sense of place’  

 

(Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph / Seven )

‘ The overheated theatrics are a proper fit for his tough-guy hero, whose stern moral code and haunted personal history lend credibility to Hughes’s recurring theme of ‘the sins of the father’’ '

(Marilyn Stasio, New York Times )

‘It should certainly appeal to fans of the genre and leave them looking forward to the next’

(John Boyne, Irish Times )

‘Satisfyingly chilling’ (Gail Walker, Belfast Telegraph )

About the Author
Declan Hughes has spent twenty years working in the theatre in Ireland, as director, playwright and running Ireland’s leading independent theatre company. THE COLOUR OF BLOOD is his second novel.

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Customer Reviews

Full of Secrets and Deceit
This is the second in the Ed Loy, Private Investigator series, set in Dublin.
Ed Loy is asked by Shane Howard to find his missing daughter Emily. He achieves this early on in the book but, in doing so, finds himself swallowed up in family secrets and deceit.
The pace is fast-moving and the characters cleverly entwined adding suspense in that you are never sure who is telling the truth.
However, I felt that this was not as good as Hughes' debut in that the character responses and behaviours to events seemed wooden at times and lacked intensity especially when the underlying theme was dealing with child abuse. The motives of the villians seemed a bit thin and Loy's character is not sufficiently developed to provide greater connection with him.
The depiction of Dublin is good and overall this is a well worth reading.