Book Review: The Detective Up Late, by Adrian McKinty
The seventh Sean Duffy novel, now entering the 1990s.
Blackstone Publishing, 2023, 299 pages
Slamming the door on the hellscape of 1980s Belfast, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy hopes that the 1990s are going to be better for him and the people of Northern Ireland. As a Catholic cop in the mainly Protestant RUC he still has a target on his back, and with a steady girlfriend and a child the stakes couldn’t be higher.
After handling a mercurial triple agent and surviving the riots and bombings and assassination attempts, all Duffy wants to do now is live. But in his final days in charge of Carrickfergus CID, a missing persons report captures his attention. A fifteen-year-old traveler girl has disappeared and no one seems to give a damn about it. Duffy begins to dig and uncovers a disturbing underground of men who seem to know her very well. The deeper he digs the more sinister it all gets. Is finding out the truth worth it if DI Duffy is going to get himself and his colleagues killed? Can he survive one last case before getting himself and his family out over the water?
The Sean Duffy series has gone on for seven books now, so it's about time for Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in 1980s Ireland, who now has a girlfriend and a little girl, to settle down somewhere safe and cozy where he doesn't have to check under his car for bombs every morning. (I liked this grim touch - wherever he or his fellow cops go, he always mentions checking under their cars, because that's just the routine in Northern Ireland.) He's about to leave Northern Ireland for Scotland, where he can spend four more years writing parking tickets before he retires with a full pension. But he has one more case...
The series has spanned the decade of the 80s, and The Detective Up Late (which like all McKinty's Sean Duffy books is named after a song lyric) heralds in the 90s. Like all the previous books, there are tons of contemporary musical and political references. Duffy get almost as worked up about his coworkers' abominable musical tastes as he does about IRA hits and abused women.
The case is a 15-year-old gypsy ("Traveler") girl who has disappeared. She's just a runaway, the cops don't care much, but Duffy does, and tracking down what happened to her leads to unexpected connections with high-ranking British civil servants, Soviet spies, hit squads from the Real IRA, and the usual grimy realpolitiks of British law enforcement, where the rich and powerful aren't completely untouchable, but it takes a lot of careful police work to touch them.
There is a subplot about an IRA double agent Duffy's been running, providing a dramatic coda to a story that was a little short on shootouts.
I've enjoyed the Sean Duffy series and I don't know if this is the last one (Duffy still has a few years and could probably get dragged into another case so McKinty can rant about 90s music for a while), but it's probably reached the ideal point for the author to move on (something not all mystery series authors know how to do).
Also by Adrian McKinty: My reviews of The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, In the Morning I'll Be Gone, Gun Street Girl, Rain Dogs, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly, Hidden River, and The Island.
My complete list of book reviews.
Blackstone Publishing, 2023, 299 pages
Slamming the door on the hellscape of 1980s Belfast, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy hopes that the 1990s are going to be better for him and the people of Northern Ireland. As a Catholic cop in the mainly Protestant RUC he still has a target on his back, and with a steady girlfriend and a child the stakes couldn’t be higher.
After handling a mercurial triple agent and surviving the riots and bombings and assassination attempts, all Duffy wants to do now is live. But in his final days in charge of Carrickfergus CID, a missing persons report captures his attention. A fifteen-year-old traveler girl has disappeared and no one seems to give a damn about it. Duffy begins to dig and uncovers a disturbing underground of men who seem to know her very well. The deeper he digs the more sinister it all gets. Is finding out the truth worth it if DI Duffy is going to get himself and his colleagues killed? Can he survive one last case before getting himself and his family out over the water?
The Sean Duffy series has gone on for seven books now, so it's about time for Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in 1980s Ireland, who now has a girlfriend and a little girl, to settle down somewhere safe and cozy where he doesn't have to check under his car for bombs every morning. (I liked this grim touch - wherever he or his fellow cops go, he always mentions checking under their cars, because that's just the routine in Northern Ireland.) He's about to leave Northern Ireland for Scotland, where he can spend four more years writing parking tickets before he retires with a full pension. But he has one more case...
The series has spanned the decade of the 80s, and The Detective Up Late (which like all McKinty's Sean Duffy books is named after a song lyric) heralds in the 90s. Like all the previous books, there are tons of contemporary musical and political references. Duffy get almost as worked up about his coworkers' abominable musical tastes as he does about IRA hits and abused women.
The case is a 15-year-old gypsy ("Traveler") girl who has disappeared. She's just a runaway, the cops don't care much, but Duffy does, and tracking down what happened to her leads to unexpected connections with high-ranking British civil servants, Soviet spies, hit squads from the Real IRA, and the usual grimy realpolitiks of British law enforcement, where the rich and powerful aren't completely untouchable, but it takes a lot of careful police work to touch them.
There is a subplot about an IRA double agent Duffy's been running, providing a dramatic coda to a story that was a little short on shootouts.
I've enjoyed the Sean Duffy series and I don't know if this is the last one (Duffy still has a few years and could probably get dragged into another case so McKinty can rant about 90s music for a while), but it's probably reached the ideal point for the author to move on (something not all mystery series authors know how to do).
Also by Adrian McKinty: My reviews of The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, In the Morning I'll Be Gone, Gun Street Girl, Rain Dogs, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly, Hidden River, and The Island.
My complete list of book reviews.