Murder on the Dodder

by Keith Bruton

Get Gun
Kill Doyle
Save Jack

The eagerly awaited sequel to The Lemon Man, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Novel and a Deadly Pleasures Magazine Top 10 Paperback of the Year.

Patrick Callen is a bike-riding hitman with mild OCD trying to save his crumbling relationship with his live-in girlfriend while racing through Dublin to save his kidnapped mentor from execution. The ticking off a to-do list of murders that will make Patrick a target of the police, the mob, and his closest friends...and doom his romance...if it doesn't get him killed first.

Praise for Murder on the Dodder

"Briskly paced, unrelenting action. Bruton writes of Dublin’s landmarks and alleys with transporting affection. Fans will walk away satisfied." Publishers Weekly“Fast-paced, thrilling, and incredibly addictive, this novel was impossible to put down. I loved Keith Bruton's debut, and this follow-up is just as adrenaline-fueled!" Awais Khan, author of Someone Like Her


"This is a Dublin hitman’s diary, a fast-moving thriller with a high body count. The novel relentlessly charges forward with the author constantly surprising and wrongfooting the reader." Writing.ie
Praise for The Lemon Man

"A fast-paced crime novel that is both hilarious & hardboiled, its main character both ruthless and oddly sympathetic." ABC News

"Sparkling prose, a well-realized setting, and appealing characters make this offbeat crime novel a winner. Bruton is definitely an author to watch." Publishers Weekly

"Keith Bruton's passion for his hometown of Dublin and for crime fiction shines like a beacon in his glorious debut novel. His quiet, domestic set pieces are as rewarding, and as exciting in some ways, as his riveting action scenes." Mystery Scene Magazine

Genres: Ireland

254 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 2, 2024

About the author

Keith Bruton is the author of the crime novels The Lemon Man and Murder on the Dodder. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and lives there with his partner.
Instagram: @keith.bruton.books

Reviews

[ukkindlecustomer · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Dublin's Fair City

Confident sequel to The Lemon Man in another madcap, murderous, week. Less cooking, more guns and an inordinate amount of cycling. By the end, the reader probably knows their way through the streets of Dublin better than their home town.

[Alli Garrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

As bizarre as the first book

Great idea, mostly well written. The second book is as violent as the previous one. Patrick's entanglements take center stage.

[Wendi Flint Rank (WendiReviews) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great continuation of the misadventures of my favorite Irish hit man ~
Patrick Cullen. I love Ireland and there are lots of references all through the
book. Patrick, our mishap of a hit man, has a slight case of OCD so he leaves
little notes for his jobs and life all over his apartment. Having tried to quit the
business he just cannot…at least not until he is able to save his friend from
execution. Due to his methods, he is constantly hunted by everyone in his life.
He is always on the radar of the Police…His friends can never find him and he’s
trying pretty hard to make a final mess-up with his long time girlfriend. I really
fell hard for this bicycle riding hit man who kidnaps babies (absolutely an accident!)
and now I am completely hooked! This great book is due 2 April 2024.
My absolute thanks to my friends at Brash Books for an insanely early copy to
read and start spreading the word!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.


Murder on the Dodder by Keith Bruton is a fast-paced track with bodies landing everywhere while Patrick searches for his kidnapped friend.

Can Patrick save Jack's life?

Patrick Callen
Patrick is a hitman by trade. However, he prefers to take out the sick ones in society—the wife beaters, child molesters, and the like. Patrick is a loyal man but prefers to keep it simple. He doesn't drive, so he rides his bike, which is smart in some ways—at least he isn't stuck in traffic much. He has a few close friends, colleagues, and his dog. We start this installment with Patrick having a live-in girlfriend, but that goes south pretty quickly.

I like Patrick, but he seriously needs to decide what he wants in life. It felt like he wanted to retire, yet I don't know what else he would do to make a living. Also, he isn't as young as he once was, and perhaps he should really work on taking better care of himself. I hope that he and Olivia can work out their issues.

The Mystery
Patrick's buddy is taken, and Patrick is tasked with killing certain people to get him back. Seriously, the barter system he belongs to is insane. No matter where he goes, someone wants something from him.

I enjoyed the way the author introduced us to Dublin by reading what is written on buildings and giving a bit of history about the locations that Patrick went to. It was like seeing the city from a bike messenger's point of view.

Four Stars
My rating for Murder on the Dodder by Keith Bruton is four stars. I enjoyed the story. Mr. Bruton tells a wonderful tale that keeps everything moving along nicely. I did not figure out who was behind the kidnapping until the culprit revealed himself. Keep writing, Mr. Bruton.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Murder on the Dodder by Keith Bruton.

Until the next time,



This review was originally posted on Baroness' Book Trove

[Sally McKinnis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice quick read. Good second effort, I hope there are more in the series.

[Patrick Macke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it a lot, Patrick is great and it's an easy-to-read, rollicking, violent bike ride through Dublin, with bits of history and unlikely encounters with interesting characters ... Nicely done

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy five stars for me.

Fans of Roddy Doyles humour mixed with the violence and characters from movies like The Gentlemen and John Wick series will enjoy Murder on the Dodder. You will want to visit Dublin!

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5

I only just learned, as I went to grab the cover of the book to post on the blog, that this book is a follow-up to another volume (The Lemon Man). This definitely explains some of the questions I had (or at least I hope the previous volume would explain some of my questions). But as to what, exactly, he does, is addressed pretty directly.

Patrick Callen is a hitman.

Every year the prisons release a dozen or so killers back onto the streets. The average life sentence is about eighteen years. Not much of a life sentence. That’s where I come in. I get paid to kill these scumbags. I’ve been a hit man for ten years and that’s what pays the bills. It’s no nine-to-five job, far from it, but I’m the best in the country at it.

Now, ask yourself the question, if someone close to you got hurt, abused, or murdered by some lowlife, wouldn’t you want them dead?

Good at what he does, with no emotional tie to those he bumps off (or tortures), he gets around by bicycle and, because of his OCD, makes notes so that he can cross items off of his to-do list. In addition to his personality quirks, one of the things that sets Patrick apart from other hitmen is his willingness not just kill someone, but to do it in a way or a place that is meaningful (for either the person calling for the hit, or for the person being killed [to make a statement]).

It took me a chapter or two to make sense of this. Murder mystery? Humor? Something else? But I decided to just roll with it and have some fun. And it is fun.

Somehow, author Keith Bruton manages to make a hired killer - someone we see do some pretty horrific things - into a likeable, even sympathetic character. Of course this isn't completely unheard of ... think Dexter, for instance. He's quirky in all the best ways. As a list-keeper myself, I especially enjoyed seeing Callen's to-do list, with items crossed off after reading a chapter.

I didn't, however, always understand what certain items on the list meant or why they were crossed off. Callen's list wasn't a sentence, but a word or two (ie "Penneys" or "Baggot Street") and seeing something like "Kill Lorcan Doyle" on that list, as casually as "Merrion Square Park", hints at Callen's personality.

There was a moment, and I regret I didn't highlight it to go back and look at it again, which suggested he other motivation for doing some of his killing. This was never really followed up and perhaps I misread the moment (again, really sorry i didn't bookmark the page to reread).

The book is told in first person so we never leave Patrick's side, which can be a danger in a book like this, but it's a quick, entertaining read so we're not given the time for Callen to get under our skin.

More humor than mystery, and dark humor because of the killings, but, if it's possible, light-hearted, dark humor.

Looking for a good book? Murder on the Dodder by Keith Bruton is a fun, funny story of a hitman who does some fairly brutal murders. It's a great beach read or a great evening fireplace read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Mark Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a Dublin hitman’s diary, a fast-moving thriller with a high body count. We step into Patrick Callen’s world as it threatens to spin out of control. The root cause of his problems is that he fell in love. Before this, he was a relentless cold, cool, calculating killer, with a steady stream of successful contract killings. Unfortunately for him, his chosen love interest comes with strings attached, leaving him now trying to satisfy two employers, whilst keeping his new love interest oblivious to his trade.

Patrick Callen is Dublin’s “Equalizer” but on two wheels and possibly a mouthful of steroids. We cycle around the city and suburbs with him as he juggles to keep all his balls in the air.
However, Patrick’s not perfect, I mean who is? For a man so calm and decisive under pressure, an impulsive petulant act almost proves fatal. We are just thinking that the week couldn’t get much worse for him - and then it does. The novel relentlessly charges forward with the author constantly surprising and wrongfooting the reader as Patrick battles to meet super-tight deadlines, set by sadistic, viciously evil individuals.

The magic of this book is that we continue to sympathise and be on the side of, let's face it, a contract killer, even after his unedifying life is revealed before us. Before I read this book I always felt that winning the reader over was going to be a hard sell but Keith Bruton makes it look easy. Patrick Callen is a lot more than a one-dimensional character. He carries a dry sense of humour and a love of classical music. He also seems to be a dab hand at cooking (cooking lesson on page 135/136) and knows a good wine when he tastes one. Add to that he is an animal lover and in his darkest moments, he is often caught thinking of his rarely walked long-suffering dog, Simone. In summary, Patrick Callen himself is a bit of an animal but when all is said and done, he’s our animal and his heart is in the right place.

Following the release of this novel, Bord Failte will have its work cut out trying to encourage its readers to visit Dublin. A city, seemingly populated, by an inordinately large amount of low-life who live and operate, in uncomfortably close proximity, to the ordinary law-abiding local citizens and tourists alike. On the other hand, if this novel becomes a best seller and a blockbuster movie to boot, I could foresee Dublin City tourist guides with pink flags leading hordes of tourists along the cobbled streets and lanes of the city, re-tracing Pat’s murderous routes and bloody meeting places.

As a fringe benefit to reading this novel, you will pick up a detailed knowledge of Dublin’s historic streets, statues, bridges, churches, and public houses not to mention literary greats.
It's like getting a history of Dublin lesson for free.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed The Lemon Man, both book and protagonist, enough to welcome the sequel, despite genuine preference for standalones. The thing with most sequels is that they don’t hold the candle to the original, and this one is no exception to the rule. It isn’t so much the book’s fault, it’s just that the crisp freshness of originality inevitably leaves the building when one takes to serializing. And so, the series tend to rely on the characters themselves, hoping the reader will form a strong enough attachment to sustain them.
Does Lemon Man himself merit such an attachment? Well … first off, he doesn’t have OCD and the book should not advertise it. That just had to be said. You want to make your character quirky, hit some modern fiction prerequisites for diversity, sure, go for it. But don’t just mention a psychological disorder to check the box with nothing to back it up.
That said, in the first book the protagonist had a baby and a new love interest to juggle, and that was fun. In this one, he only has the love interest (now a more permanent although difunctional situation). Yes, he still wears slippers to ride a bike, which makes no sense to anyone who rides bikes, unless slippers in Ireland are radically different from slippers elsewhere. Quirky, but is that enough?
Since Lemon Man’s main appeal seems to be overcoming the odds, the author just layers on the abuse as heavily as he can. So instead of cushy paid assassin gigs, Lemon Man gets stuck doing random jobs and trying to save his bestie, while navigating a local gang war—the more he gets in, the more he gets beaten up. Violence is visited and revisited upon his person, until he can barely bike, though he preserves, of course, because he now is in the sequel, one that makes it very obvious a third book is planned.
So, the plot didn’t do much for me. The writing is very, very plain. The opposite of literary fiction—commercial fiction, I suppose. Short plan sentences. One after another. It’s all like …This person walked in. They looked like * and wore * and did *. First person narration gives it a sort of engaging immediacy, so the book mainly coasts on that.
My favorite thing about this was getting a bikeview tour of Dublin. That never gets old. The protagonist names every landmark and describes the city enough to make it into a character of its own, one likely more engaging that the rest put together.
Overall, a quick, mildly entertaining read. Thanks Brash Books!

This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/

[Christine DeSmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This follow-up to Bruton’s first in this series—The Lemon Man—continues the crazy-fun story of 70-year-old hitman Patrick Callen. He wears slippers and rides a bike to his hits and somehow stays alive, coming home to take care of his dog while losing at romance in his unsettling life laced with wry humor. This novel steeps readers nicely in the atmosphere and history of Dublin with its many pubs and tourists. The dialogue-driven story is swift as the hits piling up. Callen’s humor, honor code, and protective instincts for his friends keep this reader coming back. This is a different kind of suspense—daring and yet simple, oddly satisfying. Kudos to the author.

[Helena H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great sequel!

Murder on the Dodder is the second book in the Lemon man series. Like the first one, it has humour and plenty of killing scenes. You hope his relationship with former escort Olivia works out and that he saves Jack, his father figure. The Dublin location is perfect for this small time hitman. This was fun!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great follow up to the first book. Fast paced and plenty of violence and funny moments!

[Oel · Rating 4 out of 5]

More cycling, more violent adventures. Patrick fan here!

[Libby · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. You get a tour of lots of famous Dublin landmarks while Patrick, the assassin, rides his bike around the city marking jobs off his list.