The Death of Danny Daggers, by Haydn Wilks
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The Death of Danny Daggers, by Haydn Wilks
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Cardiff. The last few days of summer. Danny Daggers is about to die. He just doesn’t realise it yet. A Leeds University student with a very popular YouTube channel, Danny Daggers is taking his alcohol-downing stunts on tour. He’s about to find out that not everyone’s a fan. Ji Eun is a Korean student doing work experience at the South Wales Post. Rory Gallagher is the alcoholic veteran journo who’s mentoring her. Carnage in Cardiff might be just what they need to begin and revive their respective careers. Tom and Joseph work at one of Cardiff’s many call centres. Tom is fed up of working boring jobs and living for the weekend. Joseph is just happy to have a job. Then there’s the Amstell brothers. Simon’s just escaped from prison. And he happens to be the father of Joseph’s girlfriend’s son. And his brothers happen to be psychopaths. These stories collide and intersect over a frantic few days of heavy drinking, drugs and ultraviolence, set against a backdrop of dystopian modern Britain. WHAT READERS SAY: "I absolutely loved this book... The writing is superb and as a Cardiffian extremely recognisable... The characters themselves are also excellently written, developing well as the story does." S. Shove, Amazon.co.uk "I loved it. This is outside the normal genre I go for and I am so glad I gave it a go. The writing is fresh and you can see the author really knew his stuff. The characters were believable, some likeable, others far less so..." Wica100, Amazon.co.uk "Gritty and frighteningly real. I would describe this as a mirror of modern society if they weren't already using the mirror to cut another line. The narrative is a authentic voice of wide experience and the writing is clever without being detached.This is a (very) contemporary who-done-it, a mystery for today's world." Realtoadee, Amazon.co.uk AMAZON UK BESTSELLER #1 - Dark Comedy, #16 - Mystery
The Death of Danny Daggers, by Haydn Wilks- Amazon Sales Rank: #1963593 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-05-01
- Released on: 2015-05-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Cardiff Confidential By Alexander Garvey Holbrook In a strange way, British Literature is done a disservice by its maestros. That isn’t to say there is anything bad about our canon, just that their work has such staying power that they are near impossible to avoid imitating. If anyone must invoke University life, either in its grandeur or banality, they have the titanic figures of Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis to navigate past. If dystopia or politics is to your liking, then George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and JG Ballard loom large over your field. If you want to put language and narrative itself into a blender, Jeanette Winterson and Salman Rushdie got there first. As for the phenomenon of Britishness itself, Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time takes some beating.However, let us not forget that even pulp tales have their guru in Graham Greene, a man who was so at ease with such work that he considered them separate to his main catalogue, referring to them as mere ‘entertainments.’ But, as hard boiled stories and characters go, the sheer weighted darkness and detail are hard to match.Nevertheless, Haydn Wilks’ sole-wearing debut ‘The Death of Danny Daggers’ is an admirable attempt by a young author to bring the Greene gene into the present day and into a rather apt setting. Cardiff has never been an open or particularly vibrant city, and Wilks wholeheartedly brings the noir strain kicking and screaming into a Millennium city in decline. As with the initial explosion of Noir as a genre, cynicism and depression have been the animating factors – modern Cardiff was built on the back of millennial optimism and has since been disillusioned by years of political apathy and economic slump.It is here that the hacks are becoming extinct, the police are becoming calloused and the people are becoming dispassionate. In this grey, rainy arena, a YouTube vlogger is found dead in the midst of his ill-timed and depressing national tour. The plot then takes a step back from the admittedly full-on and rather wearying opening sequence to replay the events leading up to the murder.The sharp working knowledge of the city’s walkways was most reminiscent of Greene, as the ominous sentry-go of Hale is meticulously drawn through in Brighton Rock and, albeit with a modern updating, is the near exact style of writing that Rory Gallagher (no, really) of Celtic Media Group finds himself stomping in.True to form with most stories, Journalism is depicted as the very essence of sloth and disgrace, albeit with different flavours than tales of old. Whereas something like Brighton Rock or Scoop showed the cynicism of hacks being fuelled by mindless self-indulgence, the rats depicted here are the last to leave a rapidly sinking ship. The world is going to hell and this bunch is riding first class.Even the victim is far from sympathetic – I mean, really, who has never fantasised about running over a group of simpering product shills with a lawnmower? The event itself is no less grisly for Mr. Daggers, but that really has to be read to be believed.The style, whilst resembling Greene, is also strangely reminiscent of other Noir mainstays like Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac and James Elroy - especially in the depiction of the inherent corruption of institutions from the police to newspapers to corporations - but ran through a filter of contemporary bestsellers like Ben Elton. This is slightly unfortunate because, whilst the drive and potential is there, the technique is some way behind. At times, Wilks’ reliance on by turns heavy-handed and oblique similies and thick stretches of dialogue (and, in the case of ‘optimeuphamistically’, impenetrable words) serves to nag. Realistically, there is a lot of ink that could have remained unspent.Don’t get me wrong, though – the writing, even at its most excessive, is not an author patting themselves on the back, but a vigorous enthusiast going hell for leather. When compared with the horrific conveyer belt fiction of Lee Child and James Patterson, Haydn Wilks stands tall and is, all things considered, a potential successor to Anthony Horowitz. This all will come in time, however, so one may relax and immerse oneself in a sneering, enjoyably nasty opening effort of a bright talent.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Good story but needs some copy editing By Denny McBride (The Ceaseless Reader) NOTE: The author gave me a free copy of the ebook in exchange for my honest review.After the first several pages of _The Death of Danny Daggers_, I came very close to giving up on it. In fact, I put it down for several hours and had to talk myself into giving it another shot. Even after re-reading the beginning with which I was so disgusted, I had to argue with myself vehemently for another several hours before allowing my gentle, caring, inner reader, the one who lives to give budding young authors the benefit of the doubt, to win out. I’m glad he did. The introduction became less objectionable on my third read-through, I very quickly became absorbed in the story once the frame was established, and I ended up enjoying _The Death of Danny Daggers_ far more than I initially thought I would.As is my habit, I’ll dispense with the greatest of the unpleasantries before I lavish the praise. The introduction of the book, which sets up the frame of the narrative, is revoltingly offensive, involving nothing but flat stereotypes for characters: 2 brutish, bullying, close-minded constables who’ve already convinced themselves, absent investigation, that their suspect is a murderer; an unnamed appointed attorney identified only and repeatedly as a “weedy little ginger lawyer”; a clueless, hapless, homeless and very likely innocent suspect; and an ill-tempered, blustering, abusive Chief Superintendent. Throughout the introduction, several inappropriate sexual innuendoes are employed to compare the interrogation process to foreplay, but the controlling metaphor falls flat given the absence of any sexual tension between the participants and given that one of the metaphors is patently ridiculous, comparing the suspect’s eyeballs to testicles, specifically to “two big shameful balls beneath the loincloth of a medieval guardsman attempting to ingratiate himself with a sect of treasonous eunuchs.” What?!? I think you can see from that alone why I was almost tempted to give up on the book. Finally, the introduction ends with a misspelling of and absolute mischaracterization of the Sword of Damocles.So that sounds pretty bad, I know, but as I hinted, things quickly improve from there, beginning immediately with the introduction of one of the major characters, investigative reporter Rory Gallagher, a washed-up, past-his-prime, reflective, philosophical “boozehound newshound” from Scotland, who turns out to be a much better investigator and decent (despite his numerous major flaws) human being than most of the police and authority figures in the book.Wilks has a gift for characterization, and the book is filled with colorful, rounded, complex characters, far too many to attempt to name here. Wilks’ portrayal of his characters, as living, breathing, struggling people doing their best to survive and forge meaningful lives in a post-industrial, second-rate, dehumanizing minor city of a failed or failing welfare state, is the book’s greatest strength. In fact, that’s the true theme of the book. Yes, ostensibly it’s about solving the murder of the titular character, and that end is finally achieved, but more than that, _The Death of Danny Daggers_ is about how mind-numbingly, discouragingly difficult it is to build a worthwhile life in modern society.It turns out that Danny Daggers himself is a vapid, spineless, selfish vagabond who gets exactly the ignominious and meaningless end he deserves. But just as the investigation into his death serves as the frame for the larger story, Daggers serves as the connecting thread of the discrete characters he encounters, however tenuously, throughout the tale.Several times as I read the book, the thought occurred to me that it would transition well to the small screen, maybe as a 3- or 4-season drama. There are certainly enough different and interesting characters in it, and enough connections between them given Daggers and the investigation into his death, to sustain a series for several years. It seems the author may think so as well, as becomes evident near the end, in one of the funniest moments in the book, when several characters who are brainstorming about an office presentation they have to give notice a news bulletin on the television about the current outbreak of murder and violence and the recent discovery of the bodies of two constables. One of the characters quips, “They’ll probably make a TV series about it, a gritty police drama.”!Just a little nitpicking before I finish: the ebook is badly in need of some copy editing. It is rife with errors in spelling, grammar, and usage. Wilks always uses “passed” when he should use “past”. He frequently uses “360⁰” turn when the context appears to indicate “180⁰” is meant and occasionally uses “quite” instead of “quiet”. There was also one cultural reference that seemed particularly jarring to me, when a character makes reference to the FBI not being likely to be eavesdropping, and it’s not likely the characters are going to be robbing the Pentagon. Given that the story is set in Cardiff, Wales, it would seem much more likely the character would refer to MI5 and Thames House rather than the FBI and the Pentagon, unless Wilks is making a statement about the pervasiveness of American t.v. shows airing in the UK, which he very well may be. And although it’s not a deterrent for me, the harsh language and pervasive graphic violence may be offensive to some readers.This turned out to be a really long review, but I felt like I owed it to Mr. Wilks, in exchange for the free copy of his ebook, to fully explain what I liked and disliked. The nitpicky errors I list in the prior paragraph are rarely more than mildly annoying and distracting. And despite my initial dislike of the introduction, I was finally able to make sense of it by deciding that Wilks is making the claim that the idea of the crime drama, given its tendency to portray events and motivations as black and white, is relatively absurd whereas the stories, in endless shades of gray, of unrelated but interconnected people are of far greater importance.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Impressive Debut! By T. Stevens I went into this book with an open mind. I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review, which was a first for me, so I didn't know what to expect. Living in the US, I'm always on the lookout for decent contemporary British fiction, so I was intrigued.I really enjoyed this. As I started, I feared it may be slightly derivative of Christopher Brookmyre or Irvine Welsh, but this really was a unique read. I can't remember the last book I read set in Wales & the backdrop of Cardiff was refreshing.The story moves at a good pace & the characters have depth. The non-linear structure, though occasionally confusing, is necessary to keep the reader guessing until the very end. I can see Rory Gallagher becoming a popular recurring character in future works, in the vein of Jack Parlabane, but more flawed.Danny Daggers himself was interesting, in that he was highly unlikable, yet sympathetic. He seems to represent all that is wrong with the "Millennial" generation. There are enough of these types of "celebrity" nowadays, so it wasn't a stretch to imagine one of a handful of these current YouTube pranksters getting themselves in a jam in Cardiff, with the most bizarre set of priorities! The book's intersecting storylines use Danny as the device that connects the police, the newspaper, the various groups of friends & fringe players &, of course, the villains, aka the Amstell brothers.All in all, I really enjoyed it & I shall look forward to future works by Haydn Wilks.
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