New crime fiction: Michael Connelly revels in fresh freedom, Brian McGilloway serves up a suffocatingly claustrophobic affair
A decapitated buffalo, a stolen jade statue of a black marlin and a whiff of corruption swirling around a giant Ferris wheel – the opening chapters of
Nightshade
(Orion, £22), which features its fair share of 'freaks and f**kups', could easily be those of a Carl Hiaasen satire.
We're far removed from Hiaasen's stomping ground of Florida, though: this standalone from
Michael Connelly
takes place on Catalina Island, which, although it lies nearly 50km off the California coast, comes under the jurisdiction of the LA County Sheriff's Department.
Exiled to the island under a cloud, DS Stilwell has long since realised that Catalina is where he wants to be – but when the body of a young woman is discovered in the harbour weighed down with anchor chains and a murder investigation is opened, Stilwell has no choice but to co-operate with his old foes on the mainland.
But while Nightshade is a standalone, it's fair to say that it upholds the kind of values that Connelly's series heroes (Bosch, Haller et al) would recognise and respect: on an island of conspicuous wealth and functional poverty, Stilwell goes to bat for the marginalised against 'people with money and power', all the while acutely conscious of 'the sacred bond between a victim and those charged with finding justice'.
READ MORE
Told in Connelly's deceptively understated style, the story is richly detailed when it comes to island life but delivers its essentials in the pared-back prose of the classic crime novel. Stilwell himself feels like something of a throwback, and perhaps even serves as a homage to classic Californian detectives – private or otherwise – all the way back to the Continental Op. The abiding sense is that of Connelly revelling in the freedom of exploring a brand new environment; it is to be hoped that Nightshade doesn't remain a standalone for very long.
[
Michael Connelly: 'All four of my grandparents were of straight Irish descent. I feel it in my bones'
Opens in new window
]
Originally from Sierra Leone, Hawa Barrie has relocated to Edinburgh to continue her studies as Foday Mannah's
The Search for Othella Savage
(Quercus, £16.99) begins. Already traumatised by the abduction and murder of some of her compatriots, Hawa finds herself at the centre of a missing persons investigation when her friend Othella disappears.
Othella, we learn, has been working as an 'ambassador' for Pastor Ranka's Lion Mountain Church, one of many young women encouraged by the Church to entertain wealthy white men, the better to persuade them to donate to the church's charitable foundation. Might one of the women's clients be a serial killer? Or is Pastor Ranka's mission a cover for something truly sinister? The truth, Hawa believes, is to be found in Sierra Leone, where 'a rich man with political and religious influence is capable of doing literally anything'.
The backdrop is fascinating, and Mannah's transplanting of west African culture and beliefs to the Scottish Lowlands is excellently done, but the plot is familiar to the point of being well-worn.
Eleni Kyriacou's
A Beautiful Way to Die
(Head of Zeus, £16.99) opens in Ealing Studios in 1954, where Hollywood star Stella Hope finds herself in purdah. Until recently one-half of 'Hollywood's Golden Couple', Stella – about to be divorced – is already on the long slide into oblivion when she receives a blackmail letter from California.
Meanwhile, aspiring actress Ginny Watkins has just left London for Hollywood, where she catches the ever-roving eye of Max Whitman, aka Stella's husband. Swiftly disabused of her illusions about Hollywood's glamour, Ginny finds herself at the mercy of the predatory 'wolves' who prowl the boulevards and movie sets, their every perverse whim – up to and including drug-fuelled murder – catered to by their studio fixers.
The parallel plots are neatly linked, but where Kyriacou really excels is in her portrait of an actress as a young ingénue. Ginny suffers the myriad indignities of the aspiring actress that include voluntary starvation, psychological torture, surgeries and punitive contracts, all of which take place against a backdrop of relentless assault and sexual duress that Ginny describes as 'like being on a battlefield sometimes, like you're constantly under siege'.
Set in the village of Drumsuin in the west of Ireland, Sinéad Nolan's debut
The Counting Game
(Harper North, £16.99) begins in 1995 with 13-year-old Saoirse disappearing during a game of hide-and-seek in the forest near her family home. The only witness to her disappearance is her nine-year-old brother Jack, but when the English psychotherapist Dr Freya Cummings arrives in Drumsuin to assist the Garda by interviewing Jack, the only clue the traumatised child can offer is that of a 'creature' that haunts the woods, a formless monster that we subsequently learn has been preying upon young women for generations.
What follows offers an intriguing take on the concept of collective trauma, as Nolan blends folk horror and recent Irish history (the site of a Magdalene Laundry can be found in Drumsuin forest).
Unfortunately, Dr Cummings is not a plausible amateur sleuth. Unhappy with the pace of the investigation, and undeterred by her complete lack of local knowledge, Cummings ignores the local Garda detective: 'If Walter wasn't going to let me investigate or give him my hunches, I'd have to investigate on my own.'
Exactly why Cummings believes herself better qualified to investigate, or why her 'hunches' are more valuable than the insights of the local gardaí, is never convincingly addressed.
Brian McGilloway's
The One You Least Suspect
(Constable, £15.99) opens with single mum Katie Hamill earning a meagre living as a bar cleaner in Derry. A tough life that gets tougher when Katie is targeted by the Special Branch and pressured to keep her eyes and ears open for useful information that might convict her employer, bar owner Mark O'Reilly, and his brother Terry, both of whom are major players in Derry's illegal drug trade.
When Katie refuses to get involved ('The history of Derry was littered with the dead bodies of those who had been accused of informing to the police or Special Branch against paramilitaries.') she finds herself trapped in a vice, as her self-appointed handlers pull all manner of strings and threaten to have Katie's daughter taken away from her. Soon Katie finds herself living a Kafkaesque nightmare, desperately twisting and turning as she tries to play both sides off against one another and trying to stay alive long enough to find a way out.
McGilloway's 13th novel is a suffocatingly claustrophobic affair, a quotidian horror of how easily a person can become a pawn in a deadly game where right and wrong are simply two shades of grey: 'They were as bad as each other, the cops and the O'Reillys. I wanted nothing to do with either of them.'
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the story is that Katie is not a conventionally flawed tragic heroine: there is nothing unique about her or her circumstances, she just happens to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and powerless once the machinery starts to grind. The very best crime fiction speaks about the everyday world we wish we could ignore; The One You Least Suspect speaks with the quiet authority of truth.
Declan Burke is an author and journalist. His latest novel is The Lammisters (No Alibis Press).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Annie McCarrick's family in Long Island: ‘The gardaí did not investigate who we thought was guilty in the very beginning'
Sisters Nancy and Maureen greet Linda Ringhouse with hugs and wish her a happy birthday. She laughs if off and says she has no big plans. Wednesday is trivia night in People's Pub, a restaurant she runs in Bayport, the coastal idyll in a secluded patch of Long Island's southeastern shore, some 60 miles from Manhattan. She jokes that she'll have a drink and get the questions wrong. Linda still addresses Nancy as 'Mrs McCarrick.' 'I've asked her many times!' Nancy says, mock scolding. READ MORE 'Well, after I talk to Maureen I do call her 'Nan',' Linda protests. 'But it always goes back to Mrs McCarrick. It's all I know really. It's just the habit of a lifetime.' That everyday phrase feels weighted, given the conversation. Linda was three years old when she first met Nancy's daughter Annie McCarrick . That was it for the pair of them: fastened at the soul. Childhood friends. Nancy and her husband John's first home, close to the shore, was adjacent to the Ringhouse home. 'Right around the corner there,' says Linda. 'We were running back and forth through the woods to one another's house. I don't remember back that far; Mrs McCarrick does.' [ Annie McCarrick's best friend is 'overwhelmed with emotion, crying over my coffee' after developments in case Opens in new window ] It's summer season in Long Island but Linda admits that since a man was arrested and questioned in Irishtown Garda station in Dublin last week over Annie's disappearance on March 26th, 1993, she can think of little else. The ongoing excavation of a home in Clondalkin, west Dublin has brought her seeking updates from her phone almost hourly. On June 12th gardaí began a significant dig at the Dublin property that was previously linked to the suspect in the case in the hope of investigators finding clues to the 1993 murder. The current owners of the house have no connection to the case. 'It's really intense,' says Linda of the search. 'We are curious as to how it's going but the why, too ... you know, why such a drastic measure has been taken, after all this time as to dig up a house,' says Maureen Covell (nee McCarrick), Annie's aunt. 'It's something, you know.' Gardaí remove a skip during their search on a house at Monastery Walk in Clondalkin in the investigation into the murder of Annie McCarrick, who disappeared in 1993. Photograph: Colin Keegan/Collins Nancy, a strikingly youthful 82, has been receiving daily updates from Det Insp Ronan Lafferty, who is leading the investigation. She describes him as 'phenomenal' in his kindness and in quickly reviving an inquiry – upgraded to a murder investigation just two years ago – while debunking old leads and unearthing new information in the 32-year search for clues as to what happened her daughter, who was 26 when she went missing. 'It has to be a doozy of a tip,' Nancy says, her eyes widening. 'We are amazed that [gardaí] are taking such a drastic measure. And it has to give you hope.' [ 'We were full of hope': Aunt of Annie McCarrick says family disappointed after murder suspect released Opens in new window ] It takes courage to allow that hope to settle. The burden of three decades of anguish and unanswered questions is significant. The women knew the man questioned last week. He was part of Annie's social circle during her time in Dublin and they had been a couple for a time. Annie McCarrick's aunt Maureen Covell, her mother Nancy McCarrick and childhood friend Linda Ringhouse in Long Island, New York. Photograph: Keith Duggan As Nancy explains, there is a strange Long Island link to how he came to be in her daughter's orbit: 'There's a family here in town, the McDonalds. Eleanor McDonald is from Ireland. And she introduced Annie to her niece, Siobhán, who had come here to visit. So, when Annie went over to Ireland, she contacted Siobhán.' Nancy says Siobhán was friends with another girl who introduced Annie to his man. 'Yeah. Just ... connections. Girl to girl to girl to girl to fellah,' says Nancy. The three women talk about the man. He took her on weekend trips. He visited Long Island with her. Although Maureen is an aunt of Annie's, because there were only nine years between them, Annie was more like a kid sister. Maureen has a memory of being in Annie's house in Dublin one afternoon when she visited in 1989. Annie had prepared three trays of food to bring over to the home of her boyfriend at the time, Dermot Ryan , whom she had met while studying at Maynooth. The cross-city journey was, in the grand tradition of Irish public transport of that era, highly impractical, requiring several bus changes. Then, the other man, a former boyfriend, turned up, just as they were leaving. He had a car. Annie persuaded him to drive them across town. Maureen was in the back seat. 'And it was obvious he was annoyed – and with good reason. But he had a temper. I remember being in the back seat and he was talking fast and calling himself an 'effing eejit', which I had never heard before, and asking: 'What am I doing taking you over to your new boyfriend's house?'' 'It is a very valid question,' says Linda. Later, Maureen gives me a whistle-stop tour of the Bayport of Annie's childhood. There is a sense that little has changed: like many prosperous American hamlets, it seems impervious to time. We pass Our Lady of the Snow Church, where Maureen was married. Annie served as flower girl that day. We drive past Bayport Blue Point High School, whose entrance is decorated with a ballooned archway and red carpet as students gathered for the evening's graduation ceremony. She spins around to show me the dock where they often spent time hanging out. There's a summer fog this afternoon but when the sky is clear overlooks the Great South Bay and Fire Island. I asked Annie if she wanted to go to Ireland and she said no – she'd rather be home for Christmas. I pretty much persuaded her to go — Nancy The residential avenues are filled with period houses dating from the late 1800s, designed as summer cottages for wealthy Manhattanites seeking refuge from the infernal heat. Bayport is a 20-minute drive past the last Long Island Rail Road stop, Ronkonkoma. But in the 1980s, the city, Manhattan, was a regular draw for teenagers eager to escape the limitations of locale. 'Annie liked the city,' says Nancy. 'Food shops. The opera had standing room tickets for eight dollars and she was hitting those all the time.' 'It was really a lovely place to grow up,' Linda says of the town. 'We kind of had it all. We were close to the bay, very small school districts, small town feel. But the city was right there. It was pretty perfect.' At a house party on Long Island in mid-1980s are childhood friends Linda Ringhouse, Annie McCarrick and Kathy McQuade After high school, their gang of friends began to split in different directions, college bound. Linda moved to Washington DC for a while but returned and set up her business. All three women agree that Annie's infatuation with Ireland came about suddenly but was the real thing. Nancy and Maureen's maternal grandparents were Irish. But the family was never moony or misty-eyed about the old country. 'We had soda bread and bacon and cabbage on St Patrick's Day and that was it,' says Maureen, laughing. There was a happenstance element, too, to Annie's introduction to Ireland. Annie was 19, and Nancy's cousin Dan Casey, who taught Irish studies, took students to Ireland every Christmas. 'I asked Annie if she wanted to go and she said no – she'd rather be home for Christmas,' says Nancy. 'I pretty much persuaded her to go. 'And when she arrived, she called me two days later and asked if it would be all right if she stayed there. She was doing her second year in college here – Skidmore. So she finished her second year and went back.' She studied in Maynooth before returning to New York for her master's degree until 1991. She was working at the Corner bookshop then as a student. But she had resolved to make a life for herself in Ireland. Nancy McCarrick with Annie at a cottage in Ballyboden Annie was renting while studying at Maynooth Ireland in 1993 was a different country: patriarchal, heavily conservative and, in the eyes of comfortable New Yorkers, almost certainly basic in terms of luxuries and conveniences that were common place at home. Linda tells us about a trip she took with Annie to Roscommon, and Clifden, Co Galway, in January 1993, just two months before Annie went missing. It was a hoot: an eight-hour car odyssey where they arrived desperately late for a steak dinner prepared by their hosts. A bunch of them slept in the livingroom: the temperatures dipped once the fire went out. 'And Annie, who was upstairs, came down the next morning and she was like: 'Ah that heating blanket was so warm,'' Linda says, laughing. She could see Ireland's effect on Annie. 'I could see why she was smitten with it. And I was jealous of Ireland! I was angry she was moving away. Because she liked everything better there. And it made me ... jealous. That was the truth. I was happy for her. But I was losing her. And it was just letters then, to stay in touch, and an occasional phone call.' Maureen delights in remembering 'the coldest bathroom I have ever experienced' in Annie's place in Dublin. 'The little thing heating the whole room was this big,' she says using her hands. 'It was flipping freezing. And she had warned me about the toilet seat and we hopped into the bed and there was a hot water bottle. I'd forgotten they still made those. Then in the middle of the night I had to use the loo. And that seat was freezing. And Annie yells: 'Told ya!'' Maureen was perplexed about her niece's love for this damp, uncomfortable country. Yes, it was friendly. Yes, it was their grandparents' land. 'I would say she was infatuated with a lot of things. It was like a historical glimpse, I think,' says Maureen. 'And I remember her saying: well, the butter is better. And the milk is better. And the eggs are so fresh. And I'm like: oh shut up. They all come from the cows and chickens. Gimme a break. 'But she loved everything about it. And she loved the simplicity. And she liked the pace of the city. And everyone was so friendly there. That intrigued her. Everything and anything in Ireland she thought was better.' A year before her disappearance, Annie McCarrick and her aunt, Maureen Covell, at a cousin's wedding on St Patrick's Day in New York Nancy could understand it, though. There were two Irelands then: the official Catholic conservative country and, hovering out of reach, a burgeoning pub and music culture. The early 1990s were a fun time to be young in Ireland. The scene was authentic and energetic and unlike anything her daughter would have experienced in greater New York. 'She was an only child, too,' says Nancy. 'Everyone she met there in Ireland had, you know, four sisters and three brothers. I could see why she was so happy there. 'They could get these little houses to live in. She brought her bicycle and dishes and clothes and was very much at home there. The flight was no longer than to California. So it wasn't a big deal. Annie saw no reason why I couldn't live six months here and six there. I could have seen it. Because she was so happy there. I'm not a summer person so I'd be right at home in Ireland.' Time is tricky. It is easy for the three women to slip into the soothing nostalgia and what-ifs of that time, before March 26th, 1993. When they speak about the days either side of that date, it is with a vivid clarity not normally associated with the passing of three decades. When they recall the first weeks after Annie was reported missing, and then months, and then years, and finally decades of the original Garda investigation, it is with vexation. 'They botched it,' says Maureen flatly. 'They admitted it. They didn't listen to the family and did not investigate who we thought was guilty in the very beginning. They pooh-poohed a lot and didn't follow up on things they should have. That's no secret. It is all documented. I don't know. They didn't do anything for the first 24 hours, because she was of age. And no matter how many times we said there is something wrong, it was: Oh, she is off on an adventure and she will turn up.' [ Annie McCarrick: Cold case murder detectives must overcome poor investigations of 1990s Opens in new window ] Nancy, who has been extraordinarily stoic through her 30-year ordeal, gently interjects to say: 'But it was the time, too. It was a different country. And we were so much more accustomed to every crime going over here.' She adds that when she returned to Ireland in 2009, to participate in an RTÉ Crimecall programme, she was taken to a number of Garda stations. 'And they were all so sorry this had happened. They were very kind,' she says. But the family felt condescended to by the authorities in the beginning. Annie's father, John, who died in 2009, and Maureen's husband, John Covell, travelled to Ireland and were actively involved in the early days of the search for Annie and liaised with gardaí at the time. In those early weeks, after reported sightings of Annie in Johnnie Fox's pub in the Dublin mountains, her family and friends were willing to believe that there was something to the reports, but were quickly dismayed as the sightings seemed to dictate the energies of the investigation. 'When it first comes out, yes,' says Linda. 'In the very beginning it is a very surreal thing to think that someone she knows – and someone you know- would murder her. So, in your brain, anything to take you away from that is welcome. 'Then there was another sighting. So it did take you away for a minute.' An image of Annie McCarrick released by the Garda in 2023 on the 30th anniversary of her disappearance. Photograph: Colin Keegan/Collins She feels the first Garda investigators were 'in over their heads from the beginning'. 'I feel they had everything they needed in the first few days and once they got the tip, they were off to Johnnie Fox's. 'I think they believed they were going in the right direction. Unfortunately, they weren't listening to other people. But at the end of the day, statistically, for 30 years, we have been asking the same questions.' They have been here, by the coast, in the years when nothing at all seemed to be happening with the investigation. Annie McCarrick is one of a series of high-profile cases involving women who inexplicably went missing in Ireland in the early 1990s. The words 'disappeared' and 'vanished' are often used. But she was blindsided through an episode that, the family believe and have long accepted, ended her life. Their anguish has been compounded by being left in limbo for 30 years. Recent newspaper reports quote Nancy as saying she has 'no interest' in justice. She elaborates by saying that she doesn't believe the person responsible for what happened to her daughter is serially violent, or a threat to society. Maureen and Linda, in contrast, are adamant in their wish for justice. What is known about the events leading up to Annie's disappearance are details about an individual that she spent the day after St Patrick's Day 1993 with. This week reports attributed to undisclosed sources theorised that Annie had felt guilty about that encounter, as the suspect had a girlfriend at that time. A week later, on Friday, March 26th, she was last seen in Sandymount, Dublin, where she lived. Groceries were found unpacked in shopping bags in her flat. 'I just have to say,' says Nancy, 'I always felt this could have been accidental. I did.' The last confirmed sighting of Annie McCarrick, captured on CCTV in mid-March 1993, when she visited an AIB branch on Sandymount Road, near where she lived. Photograph: Garda Press Office Whatever exactly happened to Annie McCarrick, and whether or not the details can be established as a result of the ongoing investigation, it is clear that she was the victim of a wretched act. 'The team working on it now is at least letting us know we weren't crazy,' says Linda. She feels there is unlikely to be conviction unless there is a body. 'If they don't find her body, it might never be.' But they would take 'some comfort' in having the scenario they have thought all along might have happened validated. Later, when she is leaving, Nancy waves off Maureen's offer of a lift and is happy to make the short walk to her house. The sisters make plans to meet. Through this week of intense waiting, the daily chores of life go on. But Annie McCarrick is very much present, three decades on, in the minds of her mother and aunt and her oldest friend. Linda has carried their friendship through her 30s, 40s and 50s. She still wonders what Annie's opinion on events of the day might be. This trio of women are warm, gracious and tough. They all fervently hope that the phone call they have been waiting for will come, so they can make plans to bring Annie back to Bayport.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Eight women come forward with information on being targeted by 1976 killers of Elizabeth Plunkett
Eight women have come forward to allege they were potentially targeted by serial killers Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw in 1976, around the time the pair murdered two women in different parts of Ireland. The testimonies suggest Shaw and Evans made failed attempts to murder far more victims than previously known. Their testimonies are being gathered by solicitor James McGuill, who represents the family of Dublin woman Elizabeth Plunkett, who was murdered by the pair in 1976. The British men went on to rape and murder another woman, Mary Duffy (23), in Galway, before being caught a short time later. Shaw and Evans had travelled to Ireland from the UK with the intention of raping and murdering Irish women. READ MORE The first new witness came forward earlier this year, having seen media reports of the inquest which was finally held into the death of Ms Plunkett (23) in January. The inquest was held after it emerged recently that no death certificate had ever been issued for her. The new witness said she was hit by a car after she left a music session in McDaniel's pub in Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow. The incident occurred on the same night as Shaw and Evans abducted Ms Plunkett, who had also been in McDaniel's. Mr McGuill said he obtained the woman's medical records, which confirm the timings. 'Part of Shaw's confession had him being party to abducting Elizabeth and then retracing the steps to McDaniel's pub and then going back again. So he was driving around the area at the time,' the solicitor said. Mary Duffy, of Deerpark, Belcarra, was a victim of convicted killers Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw in September 1976. Last month, RTÉ launched a new podcast series concerning Ms Plunkett's murder and highlighting the fact that, despite the men's confessions, no one was ever convicted for her death. Since the Stolen Sister podcast began, several more women have come forward with 'strikingly similar accounts of being pursued by these two guys,' Mr McGuill said. He said some of these accounts may have been given to gardaí at the time of the original investigation and 'may or may not' have been centralised. The women's accounts will be passed on to the Garda Commissioner and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the hope that they will provide enough new evidence to reopen the case against Shaw for the murder of Ms Plunkett. Evans died in custody in 2012. Shaw, who is the State's longest-serving prisoner, has been repeatedly denied parole. As Shaw was not convicted for Ms Plunkett's murder, her family are not considered victims in a legal sense and therefore have no rights to object to his parole. The reason Shaw was never tried for her murder remains unclear. Both Evans and Shaw were initially charged with the rape and murder of both Ms Plunkett and Ms Duffy. A High Court judge later ruled they should each be put on trial separately. Evans was tried and convicted for the murder of Ms Duffy, but the trial judge ordered the jury to return a not-guilty verdict for Ms Plunkett's murder. Shaw was put on trial solely for the murder of Ms Duffy. His first trial ended in a hung jury. He was convicted in a later trial, and both men received life terms. The DPP subsequently withdrew charges against Shaw relating to Ms Plunkett's rape and murder. Despite this, over the years it became accepted knowledge that Shaw and Evans were convicted of her murder. The 'fact' was repeated in books, articles and even by the authorities. Mr McGuill said it is possible the DPP assumed Shaw would never be released from prison, so it decided to avoid the expense of another trial for Ms Plunkett's murder. He said it is also possible there were concerns about some of the investigative methods used by gardaí which authorities did not want to come to light. It is unlikely a full explanation will ever emerge. Many of the files relating to Ms Plunkett's murder are believed to have been stolen from the DPP's office in 1987 by Martin Cahill, the notorious criminal known as the General. It also remains unclear whether authorities will be able to reopen the investigation into Shaw. In response to queries, Garda headquarters said it is exclusively a matter for the DPP.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Malachy Clerkin: Cannot wait for Lions tour, but why does rugby always feel this need for overblown nonsense?
It was well into the wee hours on Sunday night and the final round of the US Open had gone medieval. The best golfers in the world were falling into sinkholes all over Oakmont, drowning in grass, dissolving in rain. It was like watching live action Pac-Man, as one of the most difficult courses in the world chomped them all to crumbs. A snuff movie in soft spikes. But then, through the gloom, Sky came back from an ad break and from the opening seconds of the soundtrack you feared the worst. It was the light plinking guitar of The Mighty Rio Grande by This Will Destroy You, a portentously named instrumental band from Texas. You know it better as the music from the Moneyball movie. READ MORE The music played over footage of mysterious footsteps in the shadows. Smoke swirling around eight headless mannequins decked in red. A silhouetted figure stood before the camera, his head bowed, his face obscured. 'Finally, it's time,' growled Scottish actor Gerard Butler , laying the accent on thicker than a cranachan layer. 'It's Lions o'clock...' Ah, no. Please no. Not this stuff. Not again. Alas, yes, indeed, it is time for this stuff again. Regular as clockwork, like a naff Halley's Comet, the rugby industrial complex has started picking up speed. The Lions series is upon us, which means that rugby's comically overblown way of selling itself is cranking into gear. Even in the dead of night when we're watching the golf. Especially in the dead of night when we're watching golf. Gerard Butler is seen during the pre-2023 World Cup warm-up rugby union match between Scotland and Georgia at Murrayfield. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/Getty 'Gggggrraaaaggggghhhh,' Butler offered, scratching at the back of his head. 'Goosebumps,' he said, in case we thought he was selling dandruff shampoo. 'It's ... it's Barry,' he stuttered over footage of Barry John in 1971, as though he himself couldn't believe he was ploughing through this nonsense. On and on, through clips of old tours, old tests, old fights. For some reason, footage of Daniel Craig popped up at one stage, 007 visiting the Lions dressingroom after the third test in 2013. 'Actors, eh?' Butler winked, conveying some class of inside joke. Your guess is as good as anyone else's. All of it was mere preamble to the final 20 seconds, whereupon Butler rose himself to his full height and unleashed various lines from Shakespeare's Henry V. Part of the once-more-unto-the-breach speech repurposed and Tik-Tokified for the digital generation. 'Stiffen the sinews. Summon up the blood! Show us the mettle of your pasture, boys [he was shouting by now], for we doubt it not. And if it be a sin to covet honour, be the most offending souls alive [he was whispering by now].' Look. I can't wait to watch the Lions. You can't wait to watch the Lions. In a world where everything has had its edges planed and its knobbly bits lopped off, the continued existence of the Lions is a miracle. Nobody sitting down today with a blank piece of paper and the sport of rugby union to plan from scratch would dare to dream it up. It's too far-fetched. It makes no sense. The Lions tour is one of the only bankable entities in a sport that struggles for mass appeal. Photograph: Billy Stickland/INPHO Yet, somehow, one of the maddest and best ideas from rugby's amateur days has been preserved. Not just that, it has thrived. It has survived the Covid nadir, it has endured endlessly lengthening seasons, it has kept on as one of the only bankable entities in a sport that struggles for mass appeal. It's here and it's magnificent, one of the absolute highlights of the sporting year. So why can't rugby let us enjoy it for what it is? It's just a sport, lads. Indeed, it's one of the purest forms of any sport, anywhere. Nothing about it matters except the matches and the results. Never mind your ersatz Agincourt cosplaying – sell that. A Lions tour is like the Ryder Cup – you're immersed in it, completely and faithfully, for every last second that it's on. And when it's over, it's gone until the next time and you couldn't care less. Apart from the players and the staff involved, nobody's day is made or ruined by the result. It is its own thing, a glorious mayfly, here and gone in a finger snap. We've spent more than 30 years watching Sky sell sport and other events in every overhyped, overblown way imaginable. Photograph: Billy Stickland/INPHO And that's a good thing. That's what gives the Lions its own unique energy and momentum. The 40,000 or so who will go to Australia for it over the coming weeks are all chasing that once-in-a-lifetime buzz, that feeling of being right there among it when the planets align. There's a lot of mythmaking around the Lions and there's no harm in people wanting to attach themselves to it. Plenty are going for a right good jolly-up – and there's nothing wrong with that either. All of which raises the question: who is that Sky ad for? And why do they only ever use this kind of guff to sell rugby? We've spent more than 30 years watching them sell football in every overhyped, overblown way imaginable. Other sports and events too – the revitalised darts is a triumph of hype and publicity, the aforementioned Ryder Cup will be undeniable come September. And yet they wouldn't be caught dead trying to evoke a 400-year-old play based on a 600-year-old battle to gin up publicity for those sports. So why rugby? It's not just Sky, either. Plenty of pre-Six Nations montages on RTÉ and BBC come infused with this carry-on as well. It's as though somebody somewhere decided that rugby can only be sold to lizard-brained Game of Thrones acolytes, waiting for the mist to clear the mountains so a ball can be thrown into a lineout. Of course, there was a more immediate – and far duller – answer on Sunday night. As soon as Butler finished caterwauling, the golf commentator Andrew Coltart dutifully informed viewers that How to Train Your Dragon, starring Butler, is in cinemas now. Just happened to have been released two days earlier, in fact. If it be a sin to covet bums on seats at your nearest Odeon...
