The Wily O'Reilly

Long before Dr. Fingal Flahertie OReilly made most readers acquaintance in Patrick Taylors bestselling novel An Irish Country Doctor, he appeared in a series of humorous columns originally published in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour. These warm and wryly amusing vignettes provide an early glimpse at the redoubtable Dr. OReilly as he tends to the colourful and eccentric residents of Ballybucklebo, a cozy Ulster village nestled in the bygone years of the early sixties. Those seminal columns have been collected in The Wily OReilly: Irish Country Stories. In this convenient volume, Patrick Taylors legions of devoted fans can savor the enchanting origins of the Irish Country series . . . and newcomers to Ballybucklebo can meet OReilly for the very first time. An ex-Navy boxing champion, classical scholar, crypto-philanthropist, widower, and hard-working general practitioner, Fingal Flahertie OReilly is crafty and cantankerous in these charming slices of rural Irish life. Whether hes educating a naive man of the cloth in the facts of life, dealing with chronic hypochondriacs and malingerers, clashing with pigheaded colleagues, or raising a pint in the neighborhood pub, the wily OReilly knows a doctors work is never done, even if some of his “cures†cant be found in any medical text!