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McKinty, Adrian - 'In the Morning I'll Be Gone'
Trade Paperback: 256 pages (Jan. 2014) Publisher: Serpent's Tail ISBN: 1846688205

This is described as the last in the Sean Duffy trilogy set in and around Carrickfergus in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Sean Duffy has been demoted, is out of CID and dispatched to the border-lands of South Armagh. He is then kicked out of the RUC after being made to take the blame for a road accident where he was not driving, as his past behaviour has already tarred his record. That is until the mass breakout from the Maze Prison in September 1983 where an old school friend of Sean's and one of the IRA’s most dangerous men, Dermot McCann, is on the loose and is believed to be planning a campaign of terror against Britain. The security services are prepared to do anything to bring McCann in, including giving Sean Duffy his old job back at his old rank. But to get to the truth Duffy has to solve the unexplained death in a locked room of the daughter of a woman who knows all about the innermost workings of the Republican movement and is willing to trade the solution to this for the whereabouts of McCann.

The writing style is as hard-boiled as ever which combined with the gallows humour of the time gives you an assured police procedural which combined with the locked room mystery which McKinty carries out well (worthy of John Dickson Carr who is name checked) gives you a book that is hard to put down.

It is a shame to see the back of Duffy but I look forward to what Adrian McKinty writes next - although it may not be the end of Duffy as Amazon are listing GUN STREET GIRL (DETECTIVE SEAN DUFFY 4) for publication in January 2015.

Mark Bailey, Northern Ireland
April 2014

Details of the author's other books with links to reviews can be found on the Books page.
More European crime fiction reviews can be found on the Reviews page.



last updated 22/01/2015 13:21