The Cold, Cold Ground
Detective Sean Duffy, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Gerard Doyle
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By:
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Adrian McKinty
Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles—and of a cop treading a thin, thin line—from the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author Adrian McKinty.
“McKinty is one of the most striking and most memorable crime voices to emerge on the scene in years.” —Tana French
Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things—and people—aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job—especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. Add to this the fact that, as a Catholic policeman, it doesn’t matter which side he’s on, because nobody trusts him, and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation.
©2012 Adrian McKinty (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
“The audiobook exceeds all expectations because of narrator Gerard Doyle. His storytelling is understated, and his dialect work is remarkable…Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.”
“A dark-humored shamus in the Philip Marlowe tradition.”
“A masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction.”
“A crime novel, fast-paced, intricate, and genre to the core.”
“McKinty creates a marvelous sense of time and place.”
“If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written.”
“Reader Gerard Doyle captures every ironic twitch of McKinty’s world-weary Duffy…In each note of Doyle’s narration you hear Duffy’s resignation to the madness surrounding him. The plots are riveting, but the front-row seat to Duffy’s deteriorating equilibrium makes them even better.”
“Everything in this novel hits all the right notes, from its brilliant evocation of time and place to razor-sharp dialogue to detailed police procedures.”
“McKinty’s fine police procedural is also the ultimate page-turner.”
“A journey into a terrifying and almost dreamlike labyrinth of violence and betrayal.”
“[A] deft mix of noirish melancholy with express-train pacing and blockbuster-ready action.”
“A razor-sharp thriller…told with style, courage, and dark-as-night wit.”
“Riveting, brilliant, and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland.”
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Sean Duffy is a Catholic police detective in a place and at a time when the IRA sees him as a traitor and his Protestant colleagues see him as an odd duck. It’s 1981, Prince Charles is about to marry Diana, Pope John Paul II is about to get shot, and Bobby Sands and other IRA big-timers are on hunger strike. Northern Ireland is a powder keg, and then things really get crazy: someone starts killing homosexuals, and a young woman may or may not have hung herself. Oh, and Sean falls an attractive doctor.In a lesser writer’s hands, all that could have been a mess. In McKinty’s, it’s riveting. I realize everything I’ve just described sounds like the obvious elements of a generic hardboiled novel, but McKinty makes it feel as if he’s invented the form.
For starters, the moment is perfect. Maybe it’s because I was a young high school student when these events took place – these were the news stories of my near adulthood – but the era seems rich with characters and conflicts that stayed with us. Northern Ireland was at the heart of a great storm, and McKinty excavates it with real care. We get the hit songs of the moment (from Dolly Parton to late-career Lou Reed), quick but accurate descriptions of the phones and record players, and glimpses of the cars everyone was driving. He brings back an era, one that wasn’t frightening in its everyday details, and makes it a locus for the conflicts that would drive the following decades.
More than that, though, we get everything with rare skill. McKinty dispenses backstory and fresh clue with a terrific rhythm. I never felt he was slipping in something important that I’d have to slap my forehead later for not noticing, nor did I feel he was telegraphing what was important. Instead, his story really feels like the story of a mystery slowly unraveling.
I do think the end falls short of the excellence of the first 90 percent of this, though. [SPOILER] Until the assassination attempt by the IRA team he’s provoked, he’s an ordinary thoughtful cop. When he takes out a half dozen armed men who have the drop on him, well, it feels contrived. And then, when he travels to Italy to kill a double agent, it seems like too much. I accept that he’s a man of deep integrity. I don’t accept that he’d take ‘justice’ into his own hands and kill a man who, despite awful crimes, has the chance to end “the Troubles” years earlier than otherwise.
I suspect that end is connected to my bugaboo about series. I’m not saying that Duffy should have been killed at the end, but I do think it would have been more true to the story to have him fail, to have him have to eat crow despite knowing who ultimately did it. To me, it feels like twisting the story to set up a sequel and probably more books with the same characters.
Barring the last chapter, though, I very much enjoyed this. I’ll keep an eye out for more McKinty – one more in the line of star Celtic noirists – and I’m happy to recommend him to others.
Great Noir with Slight Letdown at End
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Pretty average story, a bit slow actually
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Adrian McKinty prose with the voice of Gerard Doyle!
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Grocery List or Novel
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Interesting take on the 80's "Troubles"
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