Hugo Hamilton
Sad Bastard

"The eponymous anti-hero of Hamilton's sequel to Headbanger is once again Pat Coyne, a down and-out Dublin police officer given to paranoid rantings and delusions of grandeur.… For all Coyne's bluster, there is something sad and vulnerable about him; he is reminiscent of a (slightly) more well-adjusted Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces, as Roddy Doyle might have imagined him. There are plenty of hilarious scenes in this short novel, and Hamilton ties them together skillfully." — Publishers Weekly

"Richly, darkly comic — with details down to what everybody had for lunch — and a solid thriller as well. It's the quirks of character, though, that prove most memorable." — Kirkus Reviews

From the book:

As always, Coyne was talking to himself. Explaining every move he made. Justifying his contorted logic to the inner audience in his head. If somebody was to draw a map of Coyne's mind, some kind of three-dimensional elevation of his intellect, it would look something like the Burren landscape of County Clare — full of shale and fissures and layered escarpments, full of complicated underground channels of water and all kinds of exotic plant life surviving in the most unlikely places. In matters of the head, this temporarily off-duty, perhaps soon to be ex-Garda, was an enigma even to himself at times. Damaged, some might say.

Pat Coyne is one seriously sad bastard. After suffering injuries in a fire, he's been put on leave from the police force. He's estranged from his wife, Carmel, and he's struggling to regain control of his son, Jimmy, whose taste for mayhem seems to grow more pronounced every day. If all that weren't enough, there's also a murderer on the loose and a pair of wackos trying to kill his boy. To top it off, his therapist has labeled him psychotic, and lately he's been indulging a sick obsession with women's knickers. In short, he has way too much time on his hands.

In this sequel to Headbanger, it's Pat Coyne against the world. A renegade cop who seems more like Moses Herzog than Dirty Harry, Coyne rages against the government, crime, psychobabble, passing cars, the radio. He rails against corruption in any form. Every change in the country, every sign of progress is no less than a personal affront. His capacity for outrage is eclipsed only by his capacity for pontification. A comic novel with the soul of a thriller, Sad Bastard is a gritty, atmospheric, high-spirited romp through the streets of Dublin with a latter day Don Quixote.

Hugo Hamilton is the author of five novels and a short story collection. He lives and works in Dublin.

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