Plaguing Jake
"With this his eighth novel, Gerald Lynch is at the top of his literary game, and his book should be widely read." (Larry McCloskey, The Glebe Report)
"A savagely funny glimpse into the university of the future. First-rate satire--at least I hope it's satire." (Charles Gordon)
The Dying Detective
"Don't even think about skipping or skimming a sentence much less a paragraph (or stanza) in this clever and fast-paced sci-fi/thriller/voodoo/police mystery." (Goodreads)
​Omphalos:
​“He paints a dark picture of near-future Ottawa in his series, a worldview he said stems from an aptitude for humorous pessimism that satirical writers tend to share.” (Centretown News)
“The essential narrative is filled with side-plots and twists galore – from ‘factioning’ to voodoo — plus a wonderful setting, warts and all, in the not so distant future in our very own downtown Ottawa.”(Barbara Sibbald, Goodreads)
Missing Children:
“The novel’s intricate plot is true to mystery literature, but Missing Children is undeniably unique as well.” (The Fulcrum)
"Lynch’s powers of description are such that it shakes you.” (John Brooke, Goodreads)
Exotic Dancers:
“The result is a cross between Alice Munro's microscopic attention to personal tensions and Roddy Doyle's vision of the energy and humour that is part of life on the wrong side of the trout stream.” (Books in Canada)
​Troutstream:
"… is one of the most unusual and stylish murder mysteries I have ever read” (Event, UK).
"To read his sentences, at times, is enough; there is pure pleasure to be obtained from such genuinely good writing” (The Sunday Press, Ireland)


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Photo:   Maura Lynch, Crow Photography
Website design:   Bryan Lynch
Spring 2026
A new story: "Watching Over," about a voyeur/Peeping Tom, as told by, in J Journal (Spring 2026)
Winter 2026
A new story: "JC vs. ExT," in Lone Mountain Literary Society's The Nature of Things 3 (Winter 2025-26): 95-104.
​A new story: "Social Medium," in Blood+Honey (29 January 2026).
“Whatever, I am now paying the price in instant isolation and threatened anonymity. What can be done?…Upset over the absence of responses to my post, I turn to PornPlanet.”
Fall 2025
 A new story: “Morning Glory.” Cimarron Review 223, 224 (Spring/Summer 2023).
22 November 2024
A new story: “Sand and Strawberries.” The Word’s Faire (November 22, 2024).
24 October 2024
A New Story: “Our Irish Sabbatical.” A New Ulster 139 (October 2024): 36-49. 
12 September 2024
​Plaguing Jake officially launched, 11 Sept. 2024
22 August 2024
25 July 2024 
A new story, "Strings" in San Antonio Review.
"The old guitar was faithful to its model’s colouring—a sunburst. "
17 July 2024 
JUST RELEASED! The novel, "Plaguing Jake" is an “academic satire” set at Ottawa’s uBytown (which only sounds chalky). It’s also a love story and a mystery (a signed first edition of Joyce’s Ulysses is stolen).
Buy/order wherever books are sold, and from the publisher, At Bay Press.​
9 July 2024 
A new story, "Confessional" in Whimperbang.
10 June 2024 
A new story, "Tanks" in The Temz Review.
25 April 2024 
A new story, "Other Plans" in The Write Launch.
5 April 2024 
A new story, "Dancing Lessons" in Barzakh Magazine.
9 January 2024
New novel, "Plaguing Jake" available for pre-order from publisher At Bay Press, at amazon.ca, Indigo-Chapters, and elsewhere.
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Picture

​Plaguing Jake
by Gerald Lynch
​
Mary McGahern goes off to university from the small town of Leitrim Falls. Mary was mostly schooled at home by a self-taught, highly literate, widower farmer father, which has always made her an oddity.

Professor Jake Flynn, nearing retirement, despairs of contemporary higher education in English Literature, which has moved away from reading and studying the best that has been thought and written to viewing literature as valuable only to the extent that it contributes to improving the world. Mary becomes Professor Flynn’s student in two courses.
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Plaguing Jake, in the tradition of the academic satire, is also a story of young love and a mystery (a rare edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses is stolen from a display case). The novel heralds a powerful return to literary storytelling in an essential Canadian narrative, by a writer whose fiction has been described as a “cross between Roddy Doyle and Alice Munro.”
15 June 2023
​A new story: "Terminal One Departures" in The Antagonish Review 212 (Winter 2023): 5-12.
11 June 2023
An interview with Gerald conducted by Rob McLennan of Chaudiere Books:
3 March 2023
A new story: "Out of Ireland" in The McNeese Review (2023).
​1 August 2022
Now available: "Free Love, At a Price." Lost Lake Folk Opera N7 Volume 1 (Summer 2022). 63-72.
Spring 2022
A new short story in The Antigonish Review, "Orders" set some 2000 years ago and told by one Yosef (yes, that Joseph):
5 April 2022
Mary and The Crow - Short Story by Gerald Lynch
2 Feb 2022
Watch What You Wish For - In Long Short Story by Gerald Lynch
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1 Jan 2022
Upcoming Short Stories:
​"Watch What You Wish For" The Write Launch (Feb. 2022).
 "Mary and the Crow." The Bookends Review (April. 2022).
1 Nov 2021
The Arlington Literary Journal latest issue with art by Bette Ridgeway, work by Gerald Lynch: Leave Taken, from his upcoming novel, Plaguing Jake.
17 May 2021
Short story: "Christmas Comes Again." Barzakh Magazine 2021.
10 April 2021
"The Dying Detective ... is a weird and compelling police procedural that believes it is saying something profound about death and identity — to those who can keep up with the author."
30 January 2021
"Don't even think about skipping or skimming a sentence much less a paragraph (or stanza) in this clever and fast-paced sci-fi/thriller/voodoo/police mystery." ...see more
6 December 2020
​Have a *Black Mirror* fan on your holiday shopping list? All Lit Up recommends *The Dying Detective,* calling it "an intense page-turner."
#ALUbingemas day four has picks for the dystopian devotee who would walk bravely into the ashes of this world ...
…see more
5 October  2020
​Q & A: U of O professor Dr. Gerald Lynch to release new detective novel
15 August 2020
​Essay: "Why Can't Duddy Go Home Again?" University of Toronto Quarterly 2021.
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17 October 2018
​Windsor Review featuring Gerald Lynch. Includes interview, new story "Starry-Eyed," and author photo by daughter Maura (Crow Photography)
29 August 2018
​Gerald talks with Brenda Chapman on CBC's "Author-to-Author" (All in a Day).
Photo Credit: CBC Associate Producer Julie Delaney                              
5 June 2018
​Belfast Book Festival
15 June 2018
Gerald will be reading from his new novel Omphalos at the prestigious Belfast Book Festival, 15 June, 1:00 (click the date to book) at the Linen Hall Library. 
Photos from Omphalos book launch March 2nd at Benjamin Books in Ottawa:

O M P H A L O S


When Eugene DeLint, head of OMPHALOS, a philanthropic conglomerate with tentacles stretching across a drought-plagued, near-future world, is found butchered in his aerie high atop Ottawa, Detective Inspector Kevin Beldon, tortured by old griefs, is yanked from sick leave to battle new demons that will bring him to the edge of sanity. While his colleagues probe DeLint’s closest associates, Beldon holds stubbornly to the conviction that a serial killer known as the Widower—a man who has carved a brutal swath through Beldon’s family—is connected to DeLint’s murder. Aided in his investigation by old friend Chief Frank Thu, new partner Sergeant Brigid Ertelle, a clever crime computer named Mycroft, and his psychiatrist Dr. Ewan Randome, Beldon comes to believe that finding the killer will do more than restore order to a chaotic world—it will restore his life. But will it?
23 Feb 2018
28 Nov 2017
16 Oct 2017
Order ​Omphalos at Amazon.ca or direct from the publisher, Signature Editions.
Copyright: Gerald Lynch 
Gerald Lynch was born in Ireland and grew up in Canada. Missing Children is his fifth book of fiction. In 2001, Cormorant Books published Exotic Dancers, his second novel (pb. 2003), which was preceded by the novel Troutstream (Fourth Estate, Random House Canada, 1995; pb. 1996) and two books of short stories (1989 and 1992). Also in 2001, the University of Toronto Press published his second book of criticism, The One and the Many: English-Canadian Short Story Cycles, and then in 2002 the compilation Leacock on Life. His first book was a critical study of Stephen Leacock’s writings, Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity (1989). He has also published numerous short stories and essays, and been the recipient of a few awards for his writing, including the gold award for short fiction in Canada’s National Magazine Awards. He lives in Ottawa and teaches at the University of Ottawa.