Tom Sigafoos’ new novel Pool of Darkness – Raymond Chandler in Ireland is available in paperback, audiobook and Kindle. It would make the perfect gift for fans of historical fiction and crime fiction, and for fans of conspiracies involving Raymond Chandler, former Nazis, the US House Un-American Activities Committee, and a locked-room mystery involving the cat of the widow of William Butler Yeats…

Nuala O’Connor, author of Nora and Seaborne, launched Pool of Darkness at the 2024 Allingham Festival (video link here).

At the launch, Nuala said: “I hope that this novel gets all the notice it deserves. It’s an informed, witty, elegantly written book, with a lively energy in its pages. It’s a celebration of all that’s good and exciting about bio-fiction, about the act of illuminating real people and lived lives; it’s an honouring of Chandler as person, as husband, and as writer… Congratulations, Tom – may your ink never run dry.”

Declan Burke, novelist, critic and regular contributor to the Irish Times, called Pool of Darkness “A magnificent feat of imagination, and brilliantly sustained.”

And Alan Titley, Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish at UCC, said: “Pool of Darkness rattles along, full of wit and great one- liners, funny along the way, brilliantly researched and imaginatively brought forth.… Chandler comes to life as I think he was, generous, but troubled… very human, very vulnerable, yet confident in the no-nonsense of his craft.”