A Barry Award winner and shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award!A torso in a suitcase looks like an impossible case. But Sean Duffy isn’t easily deterred, especially when his floundering love life leaves him in need of distraction. So, with Detective Constables McCrabban and McBride, he goes to work identifying the victim. The torso turns out to be all that’s left of an American tourist who once … tourist who once served in the US military. What was he doing in Northern Ireland in the midst of the 1982 Troubles?
The trail leads to the doorstep of a beautiful, flame-haired, twenty-something widow, whose husband died at the hands of an IRA assassination team just a few months before. Suddenly, Duffy is caught between his romantic instincts, gross professional misconduct, and powerful men he should know better than to mess with. These include British intelligence, the FBI, and local paramilitary death squads, enough to keep even the savviest detective busy.
Duffy’s growing sense of self-doubt isn’t helping. But, being a legendarily stubborn man, he doesn’t let that stop him pursuing the case to its explosive conclusion.
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Life was cheap in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the 1980s. In a land where bombings, ambushes, and assassinations were everyday events, the discovery of the dismembered body of an American tourist hardly seemed worth bothering with—especially when the U.S. government doesn’t seem too concerned with the apparent murder.
For Detective Inspector Sean Duffy, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the death of the American is a nagging loose end of which he just can’t let go. Duffy’s search for the truth creates the plot for I Hear the Sirens in the Streets, the second in Irish author Adrian McKinty’s Detective Duffy series that began with The Cold, Cold Ground.
Duffy is a man without a country. A Catholic cop on a largely Protestant police force, Duffy feels he needs to prove himself to his fellow “peelers.” At the same time, members of the Catholic Irish Republican Army aren’t ready to trust a cop, even if he is of their faith. Duffy knows he should “cross the water,” like so many other Northern Irish, and find a new life in England, the European mainland, or North America, but he refuses to go.
Despite warnings from his superiors and his friends, the notoriously stubborn Duffy follows clues into the death of the American that take him from the battleground streets of Belfast to the nearly equally inhospitable streets of Boston and back again. Battered and bruised, Duffy slowly pulls together enough strings to tie the American’s death to the murder of an Irish Army officer and a failing manufacturing enterprise.
McKinty is a gifted, lyrical writer who paints vivid images with his prose. In the audiobook I listened to, McKinty’s prose sounds even more beautiful thanks to the voice of narrator Gerard Doyle.
He is an excellent writer!
I loved it!
What a great thriller set in the 80’s during the Irish troubles in Belfast. Detective Sean Duffy is so realistic as are the historically based events that I wanted to get to know more about him but the book ended.
The author immediately became a favourite of mine.
Great detective series with Inspector Sean Duffy crime fighting during the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 80’s. Great 1st person narrative by Inspector Duffy himself.
I like all the Sean Duffy novels, and this one does not disappoint, although I suspect it may be the last judging by its ending. (No spoilers here!)
Every single thing by Adrian McGinty is wonderful!
I only read a quarter of the book. It was too dark for me. I found the police unprofessional and didn’t even like the protagonist.
This a great series I’ve been reading them all
The troubling Troubles in Northern Ireland and our troubling hero, an occasional THC user (no random urine checks?) with more ‘lives’ than a cat. Possibly the political comment and background would be useful for American readers, but the drug use and history of lucky escapes stretched my credulity a bit too far. For these reasons I will not recommend this novel.
A cracking book. Adrian McKinty is one of my go to authors for a good book and he didn’t disappoint. The Sean Duffy series is top notch. The is tough on the soul though. Setting the series in the 80’s, it’s a stark reminder of the situation, headlines, etc. from when I was in my teens.