The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

 

Our Rating...4⭐s

356 pages

First Published...2012

You Can Buy The Cold Cold Ground...Here

You Can Find Out More About Adrian McKinty...Here

• The Blurb...

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things—and people—aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job—especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. Add to this the fact that, as a Catholic policeman, it doesn’t matter which side he’s on, because nobody trusts him, and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation.

• Our Review...

I think I'm on a bit of an Ireland kick atm 🇮🇪🍀. Last book was "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha," next one is "Killing Thatcher." Its Halloween surely i should being reading creepy stuff. Oh well 😊.

It's Ulster, 1981 and Sean Duffy is a man beset on all sides. Working in the narrow space between numerous enemies in Northern Ireland. He's catholic who is a police officer. So the catholics/IRA don't trust him, and again he's a catholic who is a police officer so the protestants/UVF/UDA don't trust him and the Brits/Army/MI5 don't trust. anyone. And to top it all, it's kicking off more than normal with hunger strikers in the Maze political prison and Maggie Thatcher even more of a right winger than TGR Davies (one for Welsh rugby stalwarts🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏉🫡😉.) I tend to like this set up. The lone hero, isolated and surrounded by enemies, must maintain his moral high ground and cunningly defeat his evil nemesis and win the girl. I'm thinking of Clint Eastwood in "A Fistful Of Dollars," or Eddie Giral, the French cop in occupied Paris in Chris Lloyd's excellent "The Unwanted Dead." See the If You Liked This... section.

The first body is a minor IRA player with his hand cut off. Standard fayre for a grass. However we come to learn that the severed hand found along the body isn't his. In addition there is a sheet of a musical score in the victim's rectum. So this is Sean's first head scratcher, is this a political or pervert murder... and we are off and running. Top man that he is Sean keeps coming back to the question....If you want to kill lots of people in Northern Ireland in the 1980s you don't really have to hide, just join of the initialism death squads. He could take his pick IRA, INLA or is he fancies a different flavour sauce he could go UVF or UDA. Serial killers? Belfast is choc-a-block with them. They're just less....exotic than the sexy American ones.

This is a very good serial killer plot but for me the USP is the setting and casting. They are quite delicious. Sean is our Mr Tibbs and the RUC take the place of the MIssissippi police as per "In The Heat Of The Night". While the location and timing, WOW . Bombs continually going off, rioting, political graffiti, shoot outs, car bomb checks and the constant drone of helicopters in the background. It's not a provincial British City it's a war zone. A society of the brink of collapse and civil war. Its an Irish Rwanda circa Feb 1994, or a celtic Fall of Saigon circa 1975 that's how screamingly chaotic the situation is.

The author conjures and blends all this stress and political angst into a heady cocktail to set the heart pumping and the blood pressure soaring.  Can Sean maintain his integrity, find the killer, punish him and not piss off the numerous terrorist and government big dogs, and off course get the good looking catholic pathologist? 

Really good book with great insight into the Troubles

This was first published in 2012. and is the first in a series of 7. Definite reads for me, but I am gonna save them for March or knowing me, I'll be reading ghost stories on St Patricks Day. 😁

• Selected Quotes...

The police were keen to have me. A university graduate, a psychologist, and that most precious thing of all . . . a Catholic.

I did not fasten my seat belt. Four police officers had died in car accidents this year, nine police officers had been shot while trapped in their vehicles by their seat belts. The statistical department of the RUC felt that, on balance, it was better not to wear a seat belt and a memo had been sent

We drank our whiskeys. It was the good stuff and it tasted of salt, sea, rain, wind and the Old Testament.

They were damp, cold and seemingly deliberately unlovely. The day the Northern Ireland Housing Executive gave you your key they probably gave you a suicide information leaflet.

He was far too attractive not to be a poofter

Brennan held up his hand. “Save it for your report. It’s not your worry any more. Nor mine. It’s that most glorious of things now: someone else’s problem.”

I looked for the customary plastic bag containing thirty sixpences or fifty-pence pieces but I didn’t find it. They didn’t always leave thirty pieces of silver when they shot informers but often they did. Here’s the hand that took the dirty money and here’s the Judas’s bargain.

hey would just love to top you, wouldn’t they, my lad? They’d love it.” “I suppose they would, sir,” I admitted. Everybody knew the IRA had a bounty on Catholic coppers.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

Killing Thatcher by Rory  Carrol

Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman

The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd...review here