OFF BROADWAY (2005)
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Harry the Hurler – retired Chief Executive of The Boys Inc and wannabe Mayor of Derry – is a troubled man. He’s after setting up his number two, Plunkett ‘Bad Breath’ Bradley, in a little pub as a retirement present, but now his old buddy is fleecing him closer than a bald head. And clearly for morale purposes, Plunkett has to be made repent.
Harry’s private life is no less complicated and he has growing suspicions that his wife Lorna’s Friday night dance lessons are a blind for some one-on-one hokey-cokey with his chief fundraiser Sparkly Barkley.
Simon Timoney, Harry’s political rival, is another man battling marital problems. Though his difficulties are likely to become very public, very quickly, unless he can get the journalist Stammering Stan to suppress a videotape, which records the results of a private competition being conducted by two extra-friendly Spanish exchange students. But Stan’s not a man you can rush – just ask his lawyer girlfriend Letemout Lou Johnston, who’s convinced her “something borrowed” is going to be a Zimmer frame.
Off Broadway is a series of interwoven short stories, which take an irreverent look at the crookery, roguery and skullduggery that is post-ceasefire Ireland today.
The book is the second major work of fiction from the best-selling author of The Private Diary of a Suspended MLA – recently described by the Sunday Times as ‘The best Northern Ireland political novel of the century’.