In The Spotlight: Eoin Colfer’s Plugged

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. Some crime fiction is what you’d call very darkly comic. It takes skill to balance the elements in a novel like that, so that the very dark aspects of it aren’t overly gruesome or bleak, and so that the comic aspects of it don’t take away from the ‘crime’ parts of the story. Let’s take a look at this sort of novel today, and turn the spotlight on Eoin Colfer’s Plugged (yes, the Eoin Colfer of Artemis Fowl fame).

As the story begins, Daniel McEvoy works security at a sleazy nightclub/casino called Slotz, in the (fictitious) town of Cloisters, New Jersey. McEvoy is ex-pat Irish, who served as a peacekeeper in the Middle East. Now, he’s got a second-rate job in a third-rate club. One night, a shady lawyer named Jaryd Faber gets in trouble at the club for groping…