Review by Ian Keogh

Killian is a petty criminal in Dublin who’s screwed up one too many times. He catches a break, though, and manages to run off into the wilderness before being shot at night. Gavin Fullerton’s sample art shows him coming across Neev in the woods, and readers who’ve been paying attention will recall her as the subject of a news report playing in the background a few pages earlier. She’s been missing for four days.

Bog Bodies is a masterclass in how to construct suspense from very little while at the same time providing a barrel of laughs. It’s night in a hostile environment for which both Killian and Neev are ill prepared, and neither are the type who think more than a few minutes ahead anyway. The additional complication is Killian not being entirely honest about two men with guns aiming to kill him.

Gavin Fullerton’s art drips with atmosphere from the bleak landscape to faces caught in headlights frozen in fear. The darkness extends everywhere, and the people are distinctive and memorable. More so than on most graphic novels the colouring is integral, and Rebecca Nalty keeps it dark and simple with tones reflecting the circumstances and red absent other than when used for blood.

Declan Shalvey winds up the characters and lets them go, supplying clever dialogue all the way through. He’s probably a writer who takes the time to read his dialogue aloud to see how it sounds, as the Irish phrasing transmits as real as it echoes in your head. Scrote that he is, you’ll nevertheless find yourself pulling for Killian long before the end, and there’s no predicting where anything is heading. Neev, for instance. What’s she been up to for four days, and why’s she battered?

Unfortunately a story that’s really gripping all the way through doesn’t make it to the finish line. It needed something a little more concrete as a finale, and an ending hints at what might happen, but not with any great conviction. Still, this is 90% of a great crime story.