A mysterious suicide and double murder are at the heart of this powerful thriller set in Northern Ireland amidst the Troubles, from the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author Adrian McKinty
“McKinty is in full command of language, plot, and setting in a terrifying period of history…” —Library Journal (starred review)
Belfast, 1985. Amid the Troubles, Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggles with burnout as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point-blank and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances. He soon discovers that Kelly was present at a decadent Oxford party where a cabinet minister's daughter died of a heroin overdose, which may or may not have something to do with Kelly's subsequent death.
New evidence leads elsewhere: gun runners, arms dealers, the British government, and a rogue American agent with a fake identity. Duffy thinks he's getting somewhere when agents from MI5 show up at his doorstep and try to recruit him, thus taking him off the investigation.
Duffy is in it up to his neck, doggedly pursuing a case that may finally prove his undoing.
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied philosophy at Oxford University before moving to Australia and to New York. He is the author of more than a dozen crime novels, including the award-winning standalone thriller The Chain, which was a New York Times and #1 international bestseller. McKinty’s books have been translated into over forty languages, and he has won the Edgar Award, the International Thriller Writers Award, the Ned Kelly Award (three times), the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Macavity Award, and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. His novel The Island was an instant New York Times bestseller and made their “Best Thrillers of 2022” list.
Table of Contents
1. A Scanner Darkly2. A Problem with Mr. Dwyer3. Murder Was the Case That They Gave Me4. The New Blood5. A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again6. Tide Burial7. The Girl in Interview Room One8. Police Station Blues9. Contact High10. The Offer11. The Suicides Are Piling Up12. Over the Water13. Gun Street Girl14. Even the Wasps Cannot Find My Eyes15. Gottfried Habsburg16. The Third Man17. Interrogating Deirdre Ferris18. Nigel Vardon19. Special Branch Make a Scene20. Is That All There Is to a Fire? 21. The Quiet American22. Davenport Blues23. Stasis24. The Mysterious Mr. Connolly25. Convincing Nigel Vardon26. The Confidential Telephone27. Our Business Now Is North28. Blue Tigers29. Flow My Tears the Policeman SaidEpilogue: A Year and a Half LaterAfterword
