All Them Dogs

Sinopsis

Tony Ward has landed back in Lucan with his chest puffed up and a chip on his shoulder. After five years in the UK, staying out of trouble just like he'd been told to do, he's returned home to his west Dublin estate ready to reinstate himself into the gangland scene.

But things are different now. Tony's old mentor is dead and his best pal Kenny Boyle has gone on the straight and narrow. That won't do, so when an opportunity to work directly for Darren 'Flute' Walsh, an enforcer of notorious crime boss Aengus Lavelle presents itself, it seems like a no brainer.

Flute Walsh is a far-cry from the meek, quiet boy Tony knew in school. Working as his left-hand man offers a level of security against repercussions for the crimes he'd gone on the run for as well as giving him a way into the life he wants but none of that stops the big-man Lavelle making it clear that any trouble from his past will be Tony's alone to answer for.

Already burned by the empty promises of one dead mentor, Tony is keen to prove himself as his own man, but there is a pull to Flute Walsh, one he's felt before. With the fragments of his past life still in the rearview and a whole new gang of headbangers to contend with, it is a pull too hard to resist. As Tony turns his back on the paper-thin structures that support him he looks for stability in his new, brutal surroundings. But where is there room for love in a world like this, where anything that's buried is always unearthed and retribution is never far away?

Biographical Note:
Djamel White is an Irish writer and editor. He earned an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin and was fiction editor for the inaugural issue of the literary and art journal Profiles. He has worked as an assistant for New Island Books and has managed one of Ireland's leading tattoo shops. He lives in Dublin.

Review Quotes:
Praise for All Them Dogs

"A fast-paced tale of underworld revenge and star-crossed love that never waits for readers to catch their breath." - NPR
"Djamel White is poised as a powerful new voice in Irish literature ... The gritty realism of each scene is confidently portrayed and exuberantly realized." - The Guardian
" All Them Dogs offers an intense view into the life of a man whose choices are constrained by the violence of his world." -Booklist
"A riveting and tender literary thriller about a young man exploring his sexuality while trying to find his footing in the crime world...It's a memorable story of a man's ill-fated attempt to transcend his hopelessness." - Publishers Weekly
"With care and verve, Djamel White brings vividly to life the genial malice and ambient dread that infuses All Them Dogs world of feuding West Dublin gangsters." -Colin Barrett, author of Wild Horses
"Inescapable and fresh...It's a brilliant debut from an author sure to one day have a place in the Irish literary canon." - Library Journal, STARRED review
"This is a revelation: a mob thriller steeped in the gallows humor of working-class Dublin, yet with notes of tenderness to temper the violence." - Kirkus, STARRED review
"If you like propellant crime stories by fresh, young, voices, rejoice: Djamel White. . . is a welcome addition to the throngs of neo-noir authors." --The Center for Fiction

"Exhilarating and often frightening, Djamel White's first novel is a hugely satisfying read. It adds new streets to Dublin's literary map." - Roddy Doyle, author of the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
" All Them Dogs is all that-- a book you inhale, devour, grapple with, and reel from more than read. A coming-of-age novel for an age that comes breathing down the back of your neck. The kind of book where everything is on the edge of a knife and where love, like death, is either a kiss or a bullet away." - Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings
"In the best Irish style, Djamel White uses a local voice to blast through language and make it new. His hero, Tony Ward, is a bittersweet confection of self-defeating swagger and All Them Dogs is a stylish, adroit, and gritty debut." -Anne Enright, author of the Booker Prize-winning The Gathering

"A moving, fast-paced novel about masculinity, violence, and vulnerability, set in parts of Dublin that rarely appear in literature and written in prose at once glittering and tender." - Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall
"As beautiful and tough as an uncut jewel, this kinetic and claustrophobic novel takes you deep into a darkness where desire, sex and violence become dangerously, seductively tangled." -Colin Walsh, author of Kala

" All Them Dogs is a claustrophobic masterpiece--an emotionally devastating literary crime novel set in Dublin's underworld, where violence, poverty, and toxic masculinity form a brutal backdrop to a brilliantly tender love story. Djamel White has taken a familiar genre and turned it into something bright and new, burning like white phosphorus." -Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

" All Them Dogs is as compelling as your favorite gangster movie, as profound as your favorite novel. So sexy and tender and dangerous and poetic and frightening." -August Thompson, author of Anyone's Ghost