2017 crime, sixth in the Sean Duffy series. Belfast, 1988: a heroin
dealer is wounded by a crossbow bolt, and another is murdered. But for
once it doesn't seem to have been the paramilitaries who did it.
There's a trick here which always irks me: in the prologue, Duffy
is being taken to be shot by paramilitaries. It fits properly between
chapters 15 and 16, and putting it at the start of the book suggests
that the author doesn't feel confidence in his ability to engage the
reader before the action starts.
And to some extent this is justified, because this is still Sean Duffy
Emotional Idiot, except now he's actually trying to hold down a
relationship while still trying to treat everyone in his life as
machines that'll produce the right response if you press the right
levers. I find reading about Duffy's smug self-satisfaction frankly
rather tedious. Ah well. When it's balanced by something else, by
investigation or action, it's fine, but at the start of the book it's
up against the usual blind alley after blind alley, realistic but not
engaging.
"You're a glass-half-empty kind of guy, sir, aren't you?"
"I don't even acknowledge the existence of the glass, son."
Still, once things do get moving it's good stuff – I think McKinty has
finally found the right compromise between getting Duffy directly
involved in historical events and leaving them entirely in the
background. This time it's Operation Flavius in Gibraltar, and the
events that followed – but while they cause disruptions in Belfast and
more specifically to the RUC and Duffy, they aren't what the book is
about.
I caught my balaclavaed reflection in the glass.
Why are you doing this, Duffy? Why do you always have to be so
fucking theatrical? You weren't always this way. Don't you remember
that row you had with your philosophy tutor at Queens when he was
recommending the stance Camus takes in The Myth of Sisyphus?
Melodramatic and narcissistic and false you called it. You were
right then, you're wrong now.
This would have been a decent place for the series to end, with Duffy
in a reasonably stable situation for once and having finally had the
sense to get out of Belfast, but there are now two further books.
Well, I'll give them a go.
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