The Cold, Cold Ground (2012)

In Northern Ireland in 1981 Sean Duffy, newly promoted to Detective Sergeant, is posted to the relatively safe town of Carrickfergus just outside Belfast. He’s a minority in the RUC, having a university qualification and being Catholic, so the bosses want him to stay out of harm’s way and learn all he can. But Belfast is experiencing nightly riots and regular bombings and Duffy is a potential target for Republicans (for having joined the police) and loyalists (for being Catholic) so safety is definitely a relative term but he is determined to just get on with his job. His first big case at his new posting looks, at first, like the routine murder of a low-level informant. But evidence starts to mount up that this is a different kind of killing, perhaps the sort of serial killing not normally seen in Ireland where ‘people of that mindset can join one side or the other’. Another murder and then the apparent suicide of a young woman all become Duffy’s problems to solve.

The backdrop to THE COLD, COLD GROUND is, not surprisingly, grim. The timing of the story is very specific, opening as Belfast erupts into a riot that plays out like a crazed ballet as a second hunger-striking Republican prisoner, protesting their loss of Special Category status, has died in Maze prison. Political and social tension is high, there is rampant unemployment and poverty, people are emigrating en masse to England or further afield, and things are, in general, the very opposite of peachy keen. But what I loved even more than this undoubtedly authentic and almost physically cloying atmosphere is that McKinty has teased out the drama, intimacy and dark humour in the lives people live while madness, hypocrisy and ignorance whirl about them. Somehow it’s the little details, like the foreign media’s disinterest in reporting on a brutal killing that isn’t considered part of the Troubles or the squad routinely dressing in riot gear just to attend a crime scene in an unfriendly part of town, that highlight the surreal nature of the situation to perfection.

Sean Duffy is a complicated character with his share of demons but he falls on the right side of the line that separates flawed and fallible from completely unbelievable basket case. I didn’t know what to make of him for much of the book – he has character traits that I admire,others I don’t and it’s never entirely clear what makes him tick or what choice he will make in any situation. But I think that’s why I was drawn to him: so many people (in real life was well as fiction) are so bloody sure of themselves they make me want to scream, whereas Sean Duffy is as confused about aspects of his own makeup as I am about mine. I couldn’t help but find that endearing. The quick humour, the spot-on analysis of the problem inherent in John Lennon’s Double Fantasy, the obsession with Serpico’s moustache and the drinking of plentiful vodka gimlets are all delicious bonuses.

THE COLD, COLD GROUND is at times funny, uncomfortable, violent, frightening and sad and sometimes all of these at once. It is an eye-opening look at a time I feel blessed not to have lived through (because my grandparents emigrated a few decades earlier) as it exposes harsh realities about difficult lives. It isn’t an easy read but, due to its humour and the humanity of its protagonist, it isn’t unremittingly bleak either. I liked it so much that even though I’ve just finished reading it I bought it today in audio format narrated by the beautifully voiced Gerard Doyle so I can ‘read’ it again (though this time with a proper Irish accent instead of the one I did in my head because even my imagination is crap at accents). I think this is a book all readers should take a chance on. ( )

Well, I'm not feeling up to writing anything intricate and detailed about this book. It's got spot-on dialogue, good humor, a rather unique mystery (or two), and it's just plain good. It hit the shelves in America last week, so do yourselves--and the author--a favor by buying it, reading it, and telling a friend about it; McKinty deserves a wider audience, IMO. ( )

At the end of the book, in an "About" section, Adrian McKinty says the story "is a police procedural, but a procedural set in extremely unusual circumstances in a controversial police force cracking under extraordinary external and internal pressures..."

THE COLD COLD GROUND is set in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, where McKinty was born and grew up. At the time the novel was set, 1981, he was a teenager. He draws much from this background that was so close to him. The result is vivid description.

The novel transports the readers to circumstances that are part of our recent world history, but that many of us are glad we didn't experience first hand. In fact it is difficult for those who have known only tranquillity to imagine what living in Belfast heartland must have been like.THE COLD COLD GROUND helps a little with that.

This is a novel that makes you think. What is the relevance of a police force investigating a murder or a disappearance when so much death and destruction is happening everywhere as the result of terrorist activities? But then also, here are policeman who never know if they are going to come home after a day's work. Ignoring procedures such as checking under your car before starting out could well be fatal.

I think Sergeant Sean Duffy is some one I would like to meet again. He emerges from his first outing a hero, although a very complex character, and not afraid to deliver his own form of justice. Through him comes a touch of McKinty's quirky black humour. I believe THE COLD COLD GROUND is to be the first in a trilogy, with the next called I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET. ( )

THE COLD COLD GROUND arrived announcing the beginning of a new series, with a new character by Adrian McKinty and I was intrigued... and worried. It's been stinking hot in these parts, so I'm already sleep deprived. I wasn't sure I could cope with another all night reading session.

So I got cunning, and started the book early in the day. And ended up with an all day reading session. Simply could ... not ... put ... the thing down.

THE COLD COLD GROUND is therefore obviously another outstanding book from this outstanding writer. It is, however, a rather different viewpoint and a different timeframe to previous books. Sean Duffy is a Catholic copper in a Protestant police force in 1981 Ireland. A tricky job in a tricky place. A place where, as a cop, your early morning routine is coffee, brush, dress and check under your car for mercury tilt bombs before you drive to work. Where there are places that you simply do not go unless you are in a armour plated police 4WD. Even then you can get caught, and will get shot at - with malice and a clear intent to kill. There's no messing around in this world. It's dangerous, your life can turn on a look, or a thought, or just simply being in the wrong place with the wrong name.

In the middle of this climate of distrust and fear the idea that there could be a serial killer lurking, targeting gay men is strangely a novelty. There's a line in the book about most serial killers being able to satisfy their urges by joining one of the paramilitaries. Needless to say this is not a book that pulls punches. It's restrained sure, but it's pointed, carefully drawing out the story and the sub-threads, subduing the delivery to make sure that you get the points being made. And there definitely are points which you will feel are being hammered home hard, but at least it's done with a book of poetry. Take, as an example, the opening paragraph:

"The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife. I watched with the others by the Land Rover on Knockagh Mountain. No one spoke. Words were inadequate. You needed a Picasso for this scene, not a poet."

This is exactly the sort of thing that goes on throughout the book - drawing a picture of that time in Ireland that's stark, clear, sobering and moving. Drawing a picture of the life of Sean Duffy that's memorable, alone, not quite a lone wolf, but definitely a man who dances to his own tune. Not exactly brave in the face of all comers, but good and right and quietly determined. Not completely stupid, not an energiser bunny, not a man given to flights of fancy, he's alone, lonely and ever so slightly sad.

He's also a man that just fits into this portrayal of Northern Island. Whilst there's no forgetting that the book is about the solving of the deaths of two men - shot in quick succession, the strange juxtaposition of each other's hands beside their bodies, seemingly signalling something paramilitary, both men's backgrounds pointing elsewhere, it's also a book that cleverly sets up a lot of information about this character. His background, his decision to put himself seemingly in an impossible job in an impossible place. But once the investigation gets going, and the intricacies and expectations of life in Northern Island start to play themselves out, the actual solution is considerably less clear cut than it initially seems to be.

Ultimately what THE COLD COLD GROUND does better than anything else is show how complicated life in that time, in that place could be. How the politics of power, hate and influence play themselves out, how a copper in a small town can hang on and try to make a difference in a world that's - frankly - gone completely and utterly mad.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/content/cold-cold-ground-adrian-mckinty ( )