By Cahir O’Doherty

HENRY McCarty, the boy who would grow up to be Billy the Kid, was born (perhaps) in the Irish neighborhood of the Five Points in 1859. Other historians romantically suggest that he arrived with the last waves of the Famine Irish and was instead born in Ireland, or on the voyage to America.
We know for certain, however, that Henry already known to some under the alias Kid shot a man in Colorado who was bullying him and began his life on the run.
Wallis’s beautifully written portrait is engrossing. The author shows Billy the Kid as a product of his era, one of a generation of “desperate men” who knew how to handle a gun. Wallis also shows how the sensationalist press of the time was more than happy to contribute to the creation of his myth.
W.W. Norton Books $25.95.

Mothers and Sons
By Colm Toibin

EACH of the short stories in Tobin’s impressive new collection centers on the relationship between a mother and her son. Clearly inspired by the young James Joyce’s masterful Dubliners, Toibin crafts nine coolly detached portraits of (mostly) quiet desperation. There is a great deal to admire but little to love in these arrestingly spare tales of misunderstanding, miscommunication and mistrust.
Relentlessly serious, and even forensic in his detailing of the fleeting nuances that pass between his characters, Tobin’s high style stands in very interesting contradiction to the majority of his Irish contemporaries.
Scribner Books, $24.

The Bloomsday Dead
By Adrian McKinty

THE final installment of McKinty’s celebrated Michael Forsythe trilogy, The Bloomsday Dead has already been optioned by Universal Pictures (perhaps the success of The Departed has proved to them that there’s gold in Irish themed movies).
McKinty’s grand finale is a stylish and exhilarating ride. When hero Forsythe returns to his native Ireland a persuasive old flame forces him to look for her missing daughter. Outsmarting assassins, getting kidnapped, escaping and always with his trusty revolver by his side, McKinty’s just published novel provides a witty and well crafted finale to his celebrated series.
Scribner Press, $24.

Letters of an Imprisoned Mobster
By Robert F. Ely

ELY’S rollicking tales of cutthroats, gangsters and Irish mobsters is sure to delight. Seamus “Red” Halligan, an incarcerated capo of the Irish mob, writes long and vivid letters to a host of his cronies, including his dangerous wife, his intellectual girlfriend, his contrarian old parish priest and his passionately IRA supporting mother.
In Ely’s picaresque novel his hero “Red” undergoes the kind of personal transformation that once was the exclusive province of Catholic saints. Love and heightened consciousness come to the prison in a series of personal epiphanies and in those cramped and closed confines, one man still learns about the joy of living.
Author House Press, $15.90.

Lake of Sorrows
By Erin Hart

IN this chilling new novel the author creates a level of Gothic suspense that builds from the first page and never lets go. When the young pathologist Nora Galvin arrives at the dreary Irish site known locally as the Lake of Sorrows she’s there to examine the long buried, badly damaged body that has been unearthed by workers.
Delving into the pagan Irish past, Hart weaves a hypnotic tale of desire, deception and murder. Romance blooms in this unlikely setting but its path is complicated by a ruthless killer. An atmospheric and gripping new tale.
Scribner Press, $15.