Pun Salad

I can't for the life of me remember why I bought this book. Amazon tells me it was $5.50 used; the stickers on it tell me it used to belong to the Sedro-Woolley Library out in Washington state. And Google Maps tells me that Sedro-Woolley is about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, a few miles off Interstate 5.

Anyway, it's pretty good. And just the first entry in (Amazon claims) a seven-book series. So far. I'll have to think whether I want to invest the time.

It's first-person narrated by Sean Duffy, a detective in the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the year 1981. And it's very much the Bad Old Days in Northern Ireland. Part of Duffy's daily routine is to check his Beemer to make sure that nobody's attached a mercury tilt-switch bomb in its undercarriage. Riots, bombings, and arson: business as usual. Hunger strikes by Irish inmates in the Maze prison outside Belfast stir up more trouble. So it's almost a relief when there's a murder that seems to be a straight-up case of homophobic rage. Clues abound: the body has a bit of sheet music stuffed up where the sun don't shine, his hand has been cut off, the killer sends Duffy a deranged note, and (soon enough) another body is found with the same MO.

The Constabulary is largely Protestant, and Duffy is a Catholic. Not a devout one, but that doesn't seem to matter much. Corruption is taken for granted. Nobody seems to respect them; it's clear that the paramilitary forces on both sides wield the real power, thanks to their general ruthlessness.

It's a challenging case, and Duffy is driven to the edge of sanity by it. He also has to confront personal issues, including an out-of-the-blue revelation in Chapter 13. (No spoilers, but I did not see that coming.) There are violent showdowns, and a very dizzying plot twist as the killer is finally tracked down and confronted.