I've been on an Irish crime kick lately. There are a number of really rewarding modern procedurals set in Ireland the last few years and this is a promising debut to join the genre. This book's not just a modern procedural murder mystery set in Ireland with a tortured male lead character who drinks and smokes too much and has entanglements with the opposite sex that leave him unfulfilled. It is all those things, yes, but where it could just have easily just devolved into whiny pathos, it is very well written with clearly defined characters who obey internal motivation and aren't two dimensional cardboard cutouts. Even the secondary and tertiary characters are meticulously drawn. The dialogue is very well written and never clunky. I was happy to see that the dialogue never devolved into the over-the-top rendering of accents and slang that a lot of regional authors fall prey to - it flows naturally and smoothly.
This is not a cozy mystery. It's a modern murder procedural and there is a fair bit of graphic violence. A couple of scenes in particular were gruesome (but not gratuitous in any way). The language is rough, but not unduly so. There is tangential dialogue concerning non-consensual sex, but not directly related to the plot action. There is drug use scattered throughout the book, and discussions of sexual encounters with underaged females (not a spoiler, the first mention is literally in the prologue).
Very well written, exciting and it moves along at a good clip. The climax and denouement were good and 'within the rules of the game'. I did not pick out the murderer within the first 25% of the book.
Four stars, I will definitely be sticking with the author and eagerly await more stories.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes
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