In this explosive debut thriller by the New York Times
bestselling author of Empire of Blue Water, a brilliant
homicide detective returns home, where she confronts a
city’s dark demons and her own past while pursuing a
brutal serial killer on a vengeful rampage.

Absalom “Abbie” Kearney grew up an outsider in her own
hometown. Even being the adopted daughter of a revered cop
couldn’t keep Abbie’s troubled past from making her a
misfit in the working-class Irish American enclave of
South Buffalo. And now, despite a Harvard degree and a
police detective’s badge, she still struggles to earn the
respect and trust of those she’s sworn to protect. But all
that may change, once the killing starts.

When Jimmy Ryan’s mangled corpse is found in a local
church basement, this sadistic sacrilege sends a bone-deep
chill through the winter-whipped city. It also seems to
send a message—one that Abbie believes only the fiercely
secretive citizens of the neighborhood known as “the
County” understand. But in a town ruled by an old-world
code of silence and secrecy, her search for answers is
stonewalled at every turn, even by fellow cops. Only when
Abbie finds a lead at the Gaelic Club, where war stories,
gossip, and confidences flow as freely as the drink, do
tongues begin to wag—with desperate warnings and dire
threats. And when the killer’s mysterious calling card
appears on her own doorstep, the hunt takes a shocking
twist into her own family’s past. As the grisly murders
and grim revelations multiply, Abbie wages a chilling
battle of wits with a maniac who sees into her soul, and
she swears to expose the County’s hidden history—one
bloody body at a time.

With Black Irish, Stephen Talty stakes a place beside Jo
Nesbø, John Sandford, and Tana French on the cutting edge
of psychological crime thrillers.