Despite my recent inclination toward theology works, there's nothing like a good mystery novel to send a different sort of breeze rushing through your mind. I'm developing an affinity for crime fiction set in Northern Ireland. Writers such as Brian McGilloway and Stuart Neville (mentioned previously) are engaging in their tales of Ulster crime of today, but I was looking for something that would take me back to the days of the IRA, the Shankill Butchers, the Falls Road, the Maze Prison...in short, I wanted to vicariously live in that daunting period known as the Troubles.
Adrian McKinty takes one back to those days through his Detective Sean Duffy novels, beginning with The Cold, Cold Ground. Weaving in historical events with Belfast police procedural matters, McKinty takes the reader through the hunger strikes of the Maze Prison, the death of Bobby Sands, the news-arresting moment of when John Paul II was shot, and so on. The acrid smell of paramilitary bombs and the smacking of rubber bullets make this tale one that is felt as well as read.
Sean Duffy is assigned to a case north of Belfast in Carrickfergus, where he lives as the sole Catholic on a street full of diehard Protestants, sticking out like a cranberry on a bed of shredded coconut. Called to investigate a murder, Duffy soon discovers that they could have a serial killer on the loose targeting gay men. Complicating this matter are several realities: (a) Duffy, as a Catholic cop, has detractors on both sides of a red-hot divide, (b) the first murder victim is an IRA heavy player who had been noticed discussing business with the enemy days before, and (c) homosexuality is still illegal in Northern Ireland in 1981. An additional wrinkle ensues with other deaths, one of a young lady's suicide in which Duffy suspects there is more to the story.
Threaded through the story are Duffy's impulsive nature (what story wouldn't be complete without a gumshoe's brashness?), his love of classical music, and a developing yet conflicted romance with a lovely medical examiner.
Pulsing in the background is the wonderment of how much everyone knows, and who might be working for the other side on the sly. With Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom, the question of how deeply involved British intelligence might be is an open one. McKinty also moves the story through an expert understanding of detective and forensic knowledge. The reader doesn't lack for explanation but McKinty never lets the story bog down.
Needless to say, this is a gritty, edgy display of Belfast crime fiction. Readers who cut their teeth on Anne of Green Gables and have a preference for Jane Austen might have an adjustment curve. The occasional gratuitous sex and violence are woven into the tapestry of McKinty's work, to the point where I had some issues, especially with Duffy's impulsive dalliances. The Irish-dialect f-bombs and the like splash throughout the ordinary conversations. But as far as the language goes, these are Ulster coppers, it is Belfast, and it's 1981. Do the math. To beg for a spray-starch clean read is to groan for a lack of realism from that most brutal of historical periods. In short, this is a story that asks a lot from its readers, and that causes me to respect the author for that. For my part, I'm determined to make my way through the sequels in this trilogy later this year.
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