“Murder, corruption and hair loss in New Jersey.” Call me easily pleased, but those eight words on the back cover were enough to sell Plugged to this reviewer. Still fewer will be enough to sell it to a wider audience; two to be precise, the words “Eoin Colfer,” emblazoned on the cover. Colfer, largely due to the stellar success of his Artemis Fowl young adult series, has sold 20m books this far in his career. And when Plugged hits the shelves, there can be no doubt that those numbers will start to look even more impressive.

The plot is relatively simple; Dan McEvoy, an Irish ex-soldier discharged after a second harrowing tour of the Lebanon, finds himself in trouble after a friend disappears and his sometime girlfriend is murdered. In a quest to find the former and avenge the latter, he must deal with a cavalcade of eccentric characters. A delusional and psychotic neighbour with a penchant for dressing as 80s pop starlets; a degenerate, unlicensed plastic surgeon; Irish Mike, an Irishman who has never been to Ireland, and, most amusingly, the disembodied voice of the aforementioned degenerate surgeon. The potential for comedy with a cast like this is enormous, and Colfer exploits it perfectly.

McEvoy himself is a courageous hardman, neurotic about his baldness and ever-ready to come to the aid of a damsel in distress. He strides through the landscape of New Jersey, cracking wise and cracking heads, ensuring laughs and violence in equal measure.

The plot is reminiscent of Chandler; it meanders without ever releasing its grip on the reader, throwing McEvoy into the type of scrape in which Philip Marlowe used to find himself so regularly. Indeed, the similarities do not end there; smart similes and sardonic wit from the narrator are pervasive. There is a strong feeling that what Colfer has produced is a cracking contemporisation of the great man of hardboiled, brimming with laughs and with a heavy twist of the surreal.

Colfer is no tribute act though. Plugged is crammed with Celtic charm and hearty doses of sex and violence. The comedic elements of the book detract from neither. McEvoy the narrator has a fine turn of phrase, and spares no detail when describing the bloody messes he so frequently finds himself in during the book.

Plugged, then, is a gem of a crime debut from a gifted writer. Warm, witty, bloody and brilliant, it is pure entertainment, that rare type of book that mustn’t be read in public places lest the reader be sectioned for laughing maniacally to no-one.  Crime writing is one of the most competitive markets around, but Eoin Colfer is a most welcome gatecrasher.

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