ED LOY is back in town. With a name like that, his hometown would once have been LA, his best friend Sam Spade, and he would be sporting a trilby. But Ed is a Dubliner, who emigrated to LA, and now he's back to bury his mother. While in the States, he found himself dabbling in private investigations. His marriage is spent and its product, a daughter, has died from having "the wrong kind of blood." In short, Ed Loy's character CV is full of the right kind of experience for a number as a jaded PI.

The old hometown doesn't look the same. Neither does it sound like the one he left nigh on 20 years ago. Property is the currency of conversation, even at a funeral.

"It was like being trapped at an estate agent's convention. Everyone took care not to appear too triumphalist; the boom was spoken of as an unbidden but welcome blessing, like the recent stretch of unexpectedly good weather."

Anyway, at the funeral, he encounters a friend from his youth who has blossomed into a femme fatale. "On the night of my mother's funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband." Roll it there Colette, and off we go.

Loy sets out to find Peter Dawson and, as might be expected, he is hauled up a dozen dark avenues along the way, a few of which propel him back into his own past.

Naturally, he starts slowly, but soon warms to the gig as straws in the wind begin pointing him towards some sort of personal resolution.

"I would never make sense of why my daughter had to die. I probably never would discover what happened to my father. But I did have a fair chance of finding Peter Dawson, and if I did, it would close one broken circuit, remake one connection that had been broken.

And even if I didn't, it was good to feel the stir of blood in my veins again."

Declan Hughes's first novel is well plotted, as might be expected from somebody who has written and directed for the theatre for the last 20 years, primarily through the Rough Magic company. In light of that experience, the dialogue is a bit of a let down here and there, jarring with the flow of the prose.

Ed is a rounded character, and his client is also drawn sharply.

The backdrop, the mean streets of south county Dublin, is painted in delicate brushstrokes that bring it to life. Why then the author insisted on a half-assed effort to disguise actual locations like Dun Laoghaire remains a mystery, but any shortcoming in this regard is compensated for by the dry humour that permeates the narrative.

Particularly welcome are the sardonic references to the pretensions and material lusts that lurk around every corner of new Ireland. Hopefully, there is a lot more of where that came from in emerging fiction.

But Hughes will also know that without new Ireland, Ed Loy would have been on the next plane back to LA. It is the boom and its attendant rise in both the seriousness and sophistication of crime that has allowed the crime novel to finally take off and assume its place among the genres of established Irish literature. Prior to this, the crime novel, like so many citizens, had to take the boat because there was nothing here for them. Not so any more.

As for Ed Loy, after this assured debut there is little doubt he will be back in print and, quite possibly, on the small screen.