Fourth in the series about Detective Sean Duffy,
this
book was my introduction to this author. Crime in the
North
of Ireland is complicated by having two rival
jurisdictions
meeting at a border of this small area, and compounding
the
difficulties for police, this tale GUN STREET GIRL is set
during the Troubles when two tribes met with a scowl
rather
than a smile.
In 1985 the RUC has the highest mortality rate of any
police force in the Western world. Inspector Duffy joins
an
arrest squad waiting to seize the crew of a boat carrying
guns to the north Antrim coast. Shortly afterwards he's
called to an expensive illegal brothel where an American
film star assaulted a girl who refused to sample his
cocaine. I was seeing already that the situations were
complex, international and farcical. The real meat of this
tale is however a personal double murder situation in a
wealthy bookie's home.
In which other crime settings would everyone from
colleagues to neighbours be catalogued according to where
they worshipped? A dour Presbyterian sergeant, a cocky
Protestant gangster, a left-foot Catholic inspector. All
as
matter-of-course, easily discerned and seldom discussed.
The bulk of the police are not Catholics at this time, so
one community automatically distrusts them. All RUC
officers are armed with revolvers, which is not the case
in
the rest of Britain and Ireland. They police riots and
daily check under their cars for bombs. Maybe the tensions
go some way to explaining why Catholic Duffy makes free
with confiscated cocaine.
Back to the double murder case - when a suicide is
reported. Duffy leaves an embarrassingly stilted social
evening with the one female who will speak to him, a
reporter for the Belfast Telegraph. Did the killer throw
himself off a cliff, or is it all some obscure setup? I
got
confused when for no apparent reason the scene suddenly
shifted to Oxford, where a well-connected student had
overdosed herself with heroin. This seemed entirely
unrelated, and Thames Valley Police were handling it but
allowed the NI inspector to ask questions. A connection
was
suggested after a few chapters, but a few bridging lines
earlier to explain the trip would not have hurt.
Atmospheric and laconic, the tale strikes me as a Northern
Irish version of the Rebus series; a music-loving,
isolated, irreverent inspector who doesn't follow all the
rules and has uneasy contacts with crooks and spooks. As
the complications escalate with politics in GUN STREET
GIRL, author Adrian McKinty enjoys keeping us guessing and
recreating difficult times with the benefit, of course, of
hindsight.
Belfast, 1985, amidst the “Troubles”: Detective Sean
Duffy,
a Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster
Constabulary), struggles with burn-out 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.
This
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.
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