«Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's» by Jay Spencer Green

A dystopian comedy with a difference. "Makes the Hunger Games look like Hungry Hippos. Makes 50 Shades of Grey look like Polyanna." The Bloomfield Review says, "Like an obnoxious spy-comedy seen through the eyes of a filthy drunk … The language can be absurdly, almost heroically obscene." The TBR Pile says, "Bonkers. Weird. Surreal. Satirical. Politically incorrect. Clever. Absurd. Witty. Disgusting." It's debauched, depraved, delirious, delightful. Winner of the 2015 Lord of the Book Covers award. Joe Chambers is a CIA operative working in Dublin. Assigned to an agency-fronted publishing house, his problems include, but are not limited to, errant MI6 agents, insane profit-making schemes, a Francoist dwarf, and a tapeworm named Steve. He is an utterly reprehensible character, fond of submerging his head in a sink-full of whiskey and fantasising about brutally murdering irritating teenagers. He is, in other words, the perfect guide to this bizarre and repulsive journey into Dublin's gutters. Jay Spencer Green presents a twisted and exaggerated, but wholly recognisable vision of Dublin. A place of suicide bombings, mass canine culling in the Phoenix Park, "cheap Moore Street socks (35 euros for 6 pairs)", online divorce, and enough red tape and bureaucracy to drive a man to murder. A place where "cat's cheese salad" and a dubious pork/human hybrid meat share the menu. It is a Dublin of no redemption. The whole book is a dig at a country that lost the run of itself in the good times, and just lost itself in the bad. A raucous mix of double crosses, brothels, triple crosses, and cocktail recipes, Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's is a dark, twisted, and picaresque tale that fans of Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joseph Heller will love.