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A Novel
by Djamel White
Book Reviewed by:A young Irish gangster is caught in a brutal dance between love and loyalty.
Tony Ward is back in Dublin. After five years in England, where he fled after murdering a rival gang member, he returns to find that his mentor is dead and his best friend has gone straight.
Keen to reestablish himself, he jumps at the chance to work for the enforcer of a local crime boss. But Flute Walsh is a far cry from the boy Tony once knew. Drawn to Flute in ways he never expected, Tony finds that the boundaries he thought he understood are beginning to break down. Is there room for connection in a world where nothing stays buried and where retribution is just a bullet away?
By turns savage and tender, unexpected and intimate, All Them Dogs is a gripping story of violence, greed, and desire that explores one man's struggles to find balance in an unsparing world.
Excerpt
All Them Dogs
I had a John Player Blue and milkless tea with about eight sugars for breakfast. My stomach was in knots, fingers all shaky. And that feeling of doom you wake up with, it comes out of nowhere. It's like shell‑shock every time. I felt like the sole survivor of a tragedy I couldn't remember. The tea and the smoke didn't help the stomach, but I needed something to stop the shakes. It'd be a day of trade‑offs. I was a hag sat at the table, my left nostril was whistling through the cack caked up the walls of it. I could hear the low hum of Kenny's voice coming from upstairs. Lizzie usually woke him up by jumping on the bed.
I'd had a useless few hours' sleep and woke up to the lump in the mattress and the fear of God when I remembered I was sleeping on a gun. Shot up out of the bed then, just in time for the skag to kick in and send me onto the floor. I hadn't checked the clip for rounds or made sure the safety was on when I'd stashed it. I wouldn't have had a...
Tony Ward is back in Dublin. Having laid low in England for five years like he was instructed to do after murdering a rival gang member, Tony returns to his hometown ready to integrate himself back into the organized crime scene. But since he's been gone, everything has changed. Debut author Djamel White unceremoniously drops us into Tony's gritty and violent world, littering the narration with working class Irish slang that lends a sense of authenticity to his voice. But along with all the brutality and the bloodshed that he recounts, there's a tenderness to Tony's narration, especially in his descriptions of men, which are reverent bordering on erotic—but Tony, repressed in his sexuality, is unable to label his desire as what it is. Tony's relationship with Flute serves as the emotional core of a novel that unfolds into a fast-paced, twisting story of revenge, where revelations are ultimately uncovered that will shake the very foundation of Tony's world. All Them Dogs is a haunting, unforgettable first novel...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
Djamel White's debut novel All Them Dogs follows gangster Tony Ward, who returns to Dublin after years away, and reintegrates himself into the crime scene that raised him. It's one of many novels set in Dublin's gangland, and the prominence of Irish crime novels can be seen as a reflection of a familiar cultural landscape for the books' authors. In an interview with The Observer, Djamel White says, "There's almost a folkloric sense to Dublin gangsters. They're gossiped about like they're celebrities, and the tabloids sensationalise that world and its feuds."
One of the first introductions of armed violent crime to Dublin was via Saor Éire, a paramilitary offshoot of the IRA in Northern Ireland. In the 1970s, Saor Éire carried...
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