Declan Burke Faces Execution

Death Row

It may, or may not be a wrongful conviction, but you’ve been found guilty and sentenced to death. Tell us how you’ll spend your last hours.

Victim: Declan Burke. Guilty as charged, by the way, your honour.

What’s on the menu for your last supper?

With no cholesterol to worry about, a proper Irish fry-up. Rashers, sausages, fried eggs, black and white pudding, three rounds of buttered toast and a lamb chop, all topped with a heap of baked beans. And a pint of ice-cold milk, followed by a pint of slowly settled stout, preferably Guinness.

Priest, prostitute, lawyer, lover? Who’s your last visitor?

No priests, please. And if I’m on death row, the lawyer’s very probably persona non grata at this point. If my lover is still sticking with me, given that I’m guilty, then definitely her. I know she’ll have a list of stuff she’ll need doing whenever I get to wherever it is I’m going, and she’d be pretty pissed if I bunked off without it.

What’s the last book you’d choose to read?

Probably PETER PAN. Failing that, I’d read the m/s of a story I’ve been trying to write for the last five or six years, about a guy who manages to stumble into a scenario whereby he gets to spend eternity in the Greek islands.

Given the choice, what’s your preferred method of execution?

Firing squad. They allow you to smoke first, right?

Ideally, what will it say on your headstone or in your obituary?

Here I’ll have to quote / steal from Nikos Kazantzakis’s tombstone: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”

Author of THE BIG O, Declan Burke’s insightful blog, Crime Always Pays, features reviews, interviews, author profiles, and much much more. You can read his efforts to cheat the Lie Detector here.

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