Rain Dogs

Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.

Serpents Tail

RRP: £12.08

Released: January 21 2016

PBK

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The body of Journalist Lily Bigelow lies in the snowy courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, what at first looks like suicide later turns out to be murder. One more death in a country that has seen too many, this time round the crime has similarities to a classic locked room mystery and links to a scandal the establishment would like kept quiet. Another day; another load of trouble for DI Sean Duffy to sort out.

Of all the mean streets in the atlas of crime fiction these tales of Northern Ireland, at the height of the troubles must be amongst the meanest. In his previous Sean Duffy novels Adrian McKinty has brought them brilliantly to life, this latest does so once again.

He convincingly traverses the deadening rituals of life in a war zone, like checking under your car for explosive devices before even the shortest journey. McKinty combines this with sardonic humour, mostly expressed by Duffy, a main character firmly in the tradition of the sensitive tough guy, boldly going down those mean streets with a gun in one hand, and a book, or a pint in the other.

The plot touches on a real life scandal that would shake the British establishment to its core some thirty years on from when the action of Rain Dogs, with one now infamous household name getting a suitably unflattering cameo. This potentially salacious subject matter is handled with sensitivity and comes over as an entirely convincing element of the narrative.

As might be expected the thrills come thick and fast with the final twist commensurate with the nature of corruption old, and new. McKinty has done it again, pulled off faultlessly the trick of writing convincingly about the recent past, in a thriller that engages and entertains to the last page.