I decided to give this series another go because I was in Dublin. I still can't find my way to enjoying it. Won't rate it but it isn't for me.

This is the second in the Ed Loy series, following "The Wrong Kind of Blood". This is very close to a five star book, and by the next installment, Mr. Hughes moves into the five and a half star range. Declan Hughes never did seem to write a 'first' novel.. he jumped out of the gate writing better than 90% of his peers, and by his third novel he was in pretty rarified company. If you like mystery, noir mystery, with a lot of brutal action, that just happens to take place in Dublin instead of NYC or LA.. you're really going to like the Ed Loy series. Ed's boyhood pal, Tommy Owens, begins taking a larger role in this book. If you recall the old "Rockford Files" TV show and remember Angel.. you'll have a pretty good idea of Tommy's character, if you also picture him extremely dangerous! I almost always suggest reading a series in order, and do in this case also. ( )

I have struggled through this book as much, if not more so, than I did with The Wrong Kind of Blood. Big disappointment after City of Lost Girls.

Mr. Hughes is working really hard at writing an Irish hardboiled detective novel, but this just doesn't work for me. The book sort of plods along with plenty of grim and depressing happenings and just not much going on that I care about. I don't care whodunit. I don't care why. I just want it to be over. ( )

14 bodies by my count in the blody "The Color of Blood". and I may have missed 1 or 2.Ed Loy is a tough guy who takes a lot of punches. A lot of punches. He has no pretensions and tells it like it is.Once again he writes of current day murders linked to events of 30 years ago. But this is only his 2nd book and Hughes feels a bit out of control here. Definitely too many bodies, but too many characters as well, and there are characters linked to other characters all over the placeI tried to keep a diagram of all the relationships but by the end I couldn't read my own notes. But i'll keep reading this guy. ( )

Complicated and convoluted story of a family who have a lot of skeletons in their closet. Ed Loy gets involved when Emily, the daughter, is reported kidnapped and her father is sent photographs of her, naked.

As Ed uncovers the truth the bodies mount.

It's pretty evocative of the messy, complicated feuds that happen in Dublin these days. The body count is pretty high though and you'd have to wonder at the mess it makes of the lives left over. ( )