FictionFreddie Dowd has hit the jackpot - a boy band has sold millions of copies of one of his old songs, which in itself was nothing more than a jingle he cobbled together by pilfering a riff or two from a Duke Ellington tune.
But as Freddie hasn't yet received a single cent from the coffers of the London-based accountants of the boy band's manager, Paddy Lamb, he's living on borrowed money. To make matters worse, Freddie's alcoholic wife, Dorothy, has just died, his idol - jazz player Bricks Melvin - has checked out of rehab and checked into Freddie's apartment, and Freddie's 17-year-old daughter, Nadine, has started downing the brandies and giving new meaning to the term "laying Bricks". And there's one more thing - Freddie has just started a relationship with illiterate TV show presenter L.J. Carew, who just happens to be romantically entangled with Paddy Lamb, who may or may not take too kindly to his "lady" being taken away from under his cocaine-caked nose.
Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me is Sunday Independent writer Declan Lynch's second novel; it arrives hot on the heels of his debut, All The People, All The Time, but doesn't necessarily suffer from rushed-second-book syndrome. The pages turn with casual ease; the writing is unaffected and is peppered with sly, spiky humour that's as rare as it is welcome. There's a dark side to the book, too, which was largely absent in Lynch's debut: here, alcoholism spreads its stain and stink across many pages. The humour in this area is apparent, too, but it's mordant in its dry depiction of not just lost weekends but years.
What the book lacks is a storyline that sticks. As in his début, Lynch conjures up some interesting characters (equal parts venal and vulnerable, and not particularly likeable) but places them within a cautionary tale that's barely credible and occasionally far too fluky for its own good. The dialogue, also, intermittently snaps the patience: too many clipped conversations and too much elliptical yak-yak-yak. But, then, perhaps that's the drink talking.
The book's strong points outweigh the weak, however; they leave the impression of an author capable of tackling, within a fiction framework, socially/domestically fragile topics with a withering wit that raises a smile, only for it to be replaced with a grimace. 100% proof? Not yet, but the signs are good.
Tony Clayton-Lea is a freelance journalist/broadcaster and rock music critic
Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me
By Declan Lynch
Pocketbooks/Townhouse, 262pp. €9.99
