01/12/2015
Fans of Ned Kelly Award–winner McKinty’s Troubles trilogy (The Cold Cold Ground, etc.) will welcome this fourth outing for Sean Duffy, a Catholic detective for the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, in 1985 Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. Fighting internal forces on the one side and dealing with pressure from MI5 on the other, Duffy looks into the double murder of 22-year-old Michael Kelly’s parents. Michael apparently jumped off a cliff to his death after shooting them in the family living room. True to police procedural form, Duffy keeps up the world-weary demeanor even when his investigation calls the initial causes of the murders and suicide into doubt. Though the precarious Northern Irish context adds color and McKinty has a flair for detail (Duffy has to check under his car for bombs every time he drives), Duffy’s humdrum love affairs, with his one-dimensional romantic interests and McKinty’s stock dialogue, only reinforce old clichés. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Creative Book Services. (Mar.)
Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by the Boston Globe!
A 2016 Audie Award finalist for Best Mystery!
“When it comes to Northern Irish crime fiction, Adrian McKinty forged the path the rest of us follow. The Sean Duffy series is the culmination of a career spent examining our darkest moments, and McKinty is the only crime writer who can do justice to our singular history.”
—STUART NEVILLE, author of The Final Silence
“Gun Street Girl is great; I'm so glad that Adrian McKinty has given readers another novel starring Belfast cop Sean Duffy, whose earlier exploits were described in the terrific Troubles trilogy. Don't miss any of the four….”
—NANCY PEARL, NPR commentator and bestselling author of Book Lust
“Series fans will appreciate the further insight into the fallout from tragic cases, department politics, and war. As usual, there’s plenty of entertaining territorial battling between the dizzying array of law-enforcement agencies acting in Belfast, and Duffy’s investigative skills seem somehow sharpened by his lost hope.”
—BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW
“The latest Sean Duffy mystery brings back the cop who stars in these dark, intriguing, but still somehow witty novels. His latest is a thrilling, thoroughly fantastic murder mystery with countless twists and turns that take readers to the darkest parts of Belfast and some huge cover-ups within the Irish and British governments.”
—RT BOOK REVIEWS (FOUR STARS – Compelling)
“Mixes a mordant wit and casual, unpredictable violence that vividly portrays a turbulent time…. McKinty is in full command of language, plot, and setting in a terrifying period of history that sometimes seems forgotten. Fans of gritty Northern Irish crime writers such as Stuart Neville, Declan Hughes, and Brian McGilloway will enjoy this talented author.” —LIBRARY JOURNAL STARRED REVIEW
“A grim, gritty but ever-captivating yarn.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“I had been saddened at the thought that this series had ended. Imagine my delight; McKinty has now written a fourth book…. Read all four. They are phenomenal.”
—THE SUN HERALD, Mississippi
Praise for previous Detective Sean Duffy novels:
"McKinty's novels are...shot through with a smart, crackling humor that manages to be both dark and witty.... Each book is a solid standalone, but it's even better to ride the entire trilogy roller coaster."
—BOSTON GLOBE
"Exceptionally smart police procedurals. . . with [a] gritty, violent Belfast backdrop."
—BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW
“A dark-humored shamus in the Phillip Marlowe tradition, [Sean Duffy] is . . . buoyed through the murderous chaos by his love of classical, punk, and new-wave music, the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and frothy pints of Guinness.”
—WALL STREET JOURNAL
"I Hear the Sirens in the Street blew my bloody doors off!"
—IAN RANKIN, author of the Inspector Rebus novels
"Sean Duffy is a compelling detective, the evocation of the period is breathtaking and the atmosphere authentically menacing."
—BRIAN McGILLOWAY, New York Times-bestselling author
★ 02/01/2015
It's 1985 in Northern Ireland and a wealthy couple is shot in their Belfast home. When their adult son is found at the foot of a nearby cliff, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) assume murder and suicide. DI Sean Duffy suspects otherwise, and the supposed suicide of the son's girlfriend adds to his doubts. The deaths pile up as an IRA hit man, MI5, the FBI, and even President Ronald Reagan appear to be involved. Duffy, a Catholic in the predominantly Protestant RUC, is a maverick who delights in bending the rules. Sarcastic, literate, moral, and loyal, he seems to lead a charmed life amid the Troubles. VERDICT This is McKinty's fourth Duffy outing, following the "Troubles Trilogy" that began with The Cold Cold Ground in 2012. Like the earlier tales, it mixes a mordant wit and casual, unpredictable violence that vividly portrays a turbulent time when Duffy, as a matter of routine, checks under his car for bombs. After a dozen novels, McKinty is in full command of language, plot, and setting in a terrifying period of history that sometimes seems forgotten. Fans of gritty Northern Irish crime writers such as Stuart Neville, Declan Hughes, and Brian McGilloway will enjoy this talented author.—Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
2014-12-16
DI Sean Duffy (In the Morning I'll Be Gone, 2014, etc.), stuck in the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1985, struggles to close a murder case that keeps opening wider and wider."How can you investigate a murder in a time of incipient civil war?" wonders hard-used Duffy. Anywhere else, the shootings of millionaire bookmaker Ray Kelly and his wife would be front-page news for a week; in Ulster during the latest round of the Troubles, they barely make a ripple. The apparent suicide of their missing son, Michael, simply heightens the pressure to close the case by blaming him for their deaths. But Duffy, who was brought aboard the case over his own protests only to keep Larne RUC from unfairly grabbing it from DS McCrabban, isn't satisfied. Once he learns that just before Michael suddenly dropped out of Oxford, he was a guest at a wild party at which drugs claimed the life of agriculture minister's daughter Anastasia Coleman, there's no stopping Duffy. Nothing deters him—not beatings, gunfire, threats from visiting American agents whose identities are clearly bogus, or the caresses and promises of Belfast Telegraph reporter Sara Prentice, who's eager to move off the women's page, or Kate Albright, who's equally eager to recruit Duffy for MI5. The more toes Duffy steps on, the higher the stakes rise, and soon he's looking into the theft of half a dozen missiles from a not-so-secure site in Marseilles and putting scowls on a lot of well-connected faces. The results involve less detection than head-butting, with stonewalling merely the most obvious clue that Duffy's getting somewhere.Alert readers won't need McKinty's afterword to see the many motifs ripped from last generation's headlines. Nor will they be surprised to see Duffy's grim, lively fourth case remain defiantly inconclusive to the last drop of gallows humor.
Gerard Doyle gives a stunning narration of the fourth installment of McKinty’s Detective Sean Duffy series, which focuses on the period of the Irish Troubles. The plot—involving a suspicious murder-suicide possibly connected to arms dealers—is packed with the subtle nuances and passions of the beat-down, highly complex Royal Ulster Constabulary inspector. Simultaneously, Duffy's protégé, Alexander Lawson, possesses the unrestrained wonder and eagerness of an optimistic youth. Doyle portrays these opposites with an elegant grace that makes listeners forget he's even there. From the subtle changes in dialect to McKinty's distinct writing cadence and dark humor, Doyle hones in on the details that make this procedural a joy to listen to. J.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2016 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
