Book review: Duffy returns for more Ulster noir

Having mined some of the darkest chapters in the province to excellent effect, Adrian McKinty and Sean Duffy have moved on to the 1990s

Adrian McKinty’s genius is how deftly he places his roguish hero at the centre of storylines involving episodes like the Kincora Boys scandal, the De Lorean car farrago, and the double-dealing of Freddie “Stakeknife” Scappaticci. File picture: Maxwells Dublin 

• Hang On St Christopher 
• Adrian McKinty
• Blackstone, €17.95

There is a certain juncture in every Sean Duffy novel when your mind starts to wander.

You picture the troubled detective checking beneath his BMW for a tilt bomb, part of his daily ritual, then gunning the car through inevitably rainy Carrickfergus. 

He’s on the way toward the RUC barracks, his every turn backgrounded by the plaintive soundtrack of his beloved Avro Pärt. 

Then, you wonder for the umpteenth time why nobody in Britain or Ireland has yet seen fit to turn these books into a television show — as big a mystery as any he has tried to solve himself and Hang on St Christopher, the latest, is the eighth instalment in this enthralling series.

For the uninitiated, Duffy is a Liverpool-supporting, weed-smoking, poetry-loving, whiskey-chugging Catholic detective serving in an almost exclusively Protestant police force at the height of The Troubles.

There’s even some GAA in his background. 

His colourful career intersects with some of the most infamous characters and significant moments in the turbulent history of the violence in the North.

Adrian McKinty’s genius is how deftly he places his roguish hero at the centre of storylines involving episodes like the Kincora Boys scandal, the De Lorean car farrago, and the double-dealing of Freddie “Stakeknife” Scappaticci.

Having mined some of the darkest chapters in the province to excellent effect, McKinty and Duffy have moved on to the 1990s. 

Unbeknownst to those still suffering the Sturm und Drang of paramilitary warfare, the place is ebbing towards the cusp of a kind of peace. 

So too is our hero, by now cast in a state of semi-retirement as an RUC reservist commuting to work from the home he has made in Scotland with his partner Beth and their daughter Emma.

Of course, any sort of domestic peace and superannuation doesn’t quite suit his restless spirit and, in the way of all great cop dramas, he gets sucked into investigating one more murder.

Not just any homicide, either. Turns out that the deceased portrait painter is also an IRA assassin, and his demise has the potential to derail those attempting to bring an end to the fighting.

Trying to unravel the various threads from there is a complicated business that takes McKinty into unfamiliar territory, as far afield as the United States, Iceland, and Dundalk.

Thankfully, the wit and sarcasm that sustained him through his various brushes with death all along the way remain resolutely intact. Especially when meeting with the IRA honcho in his border town lair.

With every book, Duffy has evolved and those of us who have made the journey with him through all the novels have inevitably grown terribly fond of his imperfect character and tolerant of his foibles.

Yet, when he almost, but not quite, strays on his partner in this outing, this long-term reader — and I presume others — shared the haughty disdain evinced by DC John McCrabban, his long-suffering partner.

“Crabbie” is a part-time farmer, full-time straight man, and the perfect Presbyterian counterpoint to Duffy’s maverick approach to solving crimes and everything else.

Like so much about these books, their relationship is perfectly drawn. 

I am truly envious of those yet to meet Duffy and “Crabbie”, jealous because these people have eight of these treasures waiting to be delved into. 

Hang on St Christopher, named like all the others for a Tom Waits song, is as good any of them but they should be read in sequence.

Aside from creating a charismatic detective, McKinty has woven his intricate way through Ulster’s recent, tawdry history. 

And made from that entertaining and compelling noir fiction, even for those of us who lived through it just down the road.

Some achievement.

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