This is a novel about a fat man with glasses. Aviator shades to be precise, which he only wears when he is about to go on a rampage. Joey Tallon lives in the small close-knit town of Scotsfield, where dread and death are the neighbours of hilarity and abandon. We meet Boyle Henry, Hoss and other sharp men of the place, and watch as they move from brutality and corruption to wealth and respectability. And Joey transforms himself too. From bovine pie-eating barman to a man of total organization, a seeker after truth, a holy fool determined to assuage the community's guilt for its violent deaths. And it's love that has transformed him, his love for Jacy, a beautiful blonde-haired girl, so very Californian in appearance. Joey wants everyone to know the truth, but who will believe the testimony of a kidnapper, a fantasist, a jailbird, when he says he knows what happened to Campbell Morris in the reservoir, and Detective Tuite in the animal pit? Who wants to hear his stories when the men of violence are now pillars of society? But try silencing Joey Tallon. Scotfield's only true living genius is gonna tell it like it was!

This is a simple story of a complex desire - the story of a relentless quest for a place called home which exists in a spiritual landscape located somewhere between Ireland and Iowa. A breath-taking novel which spans Ireland's last thirty turbulent years and confirms Patrick McCabe as one of the finest and most original and exciting Irish novelists writing today.