I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. Pauline McLynn isn't Mrs Doyle really. She's a totally separate person. She has lots of interests and heaps of friends and she does all sorts of fascinating and challenging things and she does NOT lurk in the sitting-room all night waiting to pounce on Father Ted with a cup of tea. I know that. Still, when Mrs Doyle - I mean, Pauline McLynn - writes a book which she herself describes as a comic thriller, it would be great if it was good, wouldn't it? Given how we all feel about the magnificent Mrs D.
Let's see: a comic thriller. As in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels, perhaps - snappy, sassy, fast and fun. So when Something for the Weekend begins with a female private investigator named Leo Street kicking her broken-down car and insulting Celtic Tiger Dublin - "Barcelona, my hole" - it is, in all honesty, a promising start.
Leo, as befits a female private investigator, is attractive, single, feisty and broke, and as the first chapter progresses the reader accompanies this amiable first-person narrator to her city-centre office, sits in on her first appointment of the day (with a fat, unpleasant builder-turned-local-politician from Kildare who thinks his wife is cheating on him - no prizes for spotting The Baddie), waits while she checks her post and phones her mechanic, then skips happily alongside her as she buys herself flowers (well, it is her 30th birthday) and visits the Banklink machine.
By page 12 Leo is feeling better. Not so the reader, who, alas, is confronted by the following paragraph:
"I began to feel mean about my negative thoughts. Dublin is a great place to be. I've lived here all my life and I love it. It's vibrant and friendly, and the city centre is so compact you never have to go far to meet someone you know. Of course, the flip side is that it can be equally hard to avoid someone and in my line of work that could grow to be a problem . . . "
School-essay philosophising has no place in a 21st-century comic thriller, and even if it had a place, page 12 wouldn't be it. Unfortunately for Something for the Weekend, this isn't the only place where the narrative trundles to a halt in order to accommodate a waffling, baffling, unnecessary and distinctly unfunny commentary on the proceedings (try the interminable two pages where Leo does the "full-length self-examination in the bathroom mirror" bit), wrecking any attempt at narrative momentum in the process.
But so what, you cry; aren't there fistfuls of hilarious characters, and lashings of oneliners? Hmm. I can think of only one oneliner - when Leo signs up for a gourmet cooking weekend, falls foul of the intimidating instructor, and duly christens her the Cooko di tutti cooki - and the bulk of the book's "comedy" is carried by the assortment of fellow cooks on that course, who are, let's face it, totally extraneous to the main story. OK, it's a tolerable romp, but as comic thrillers go, Something for the Week- end is more flab than fizz and if you don't believe me, go out and read Janet Evanovich's High Five by way of comparison. But then of course Janet Evanovich isn't Mrs Doyle - or even close.
Arminta Wallace is an Irish Times journalist
