Disordered Daggers : Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty (2017)

[gervase_fen]

 

One of the best titles of any crime novel I’ve encountered.  Opens with a terrific in-media-res forced march through woodland to an execution.  McKinty’s police are overstretched, overworked, but also dogged and passionate in seeking justice years after the initial crime.  The late 1980s Northern Ireland milieu is vivid, the politics still live (McKinty pointedly doesn’t namecheck one of the leading background figures mentioned in passing.)  Duffy is a hugely sympathetic lead – smart, but damaged (he has to go to great lengths to hide his recreational drug use from the annual service medical check-up.)   Works as a stand alone introduction to this now six strong series, but it’s well worth checking out the whole range.