Review: THE ISLAND, Adrian McKinty

• 
  This edition from Amazon on Kindle
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09NBGXR6L
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hachette Australia (24 May 2022)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 363 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

a family story unlike any you've read yet.

You should not have come to the island.

You should not have been speeding.

You should not have tried to hide the body.

You should not have told your children that you could keep them safe.

No one can run forever . . .

My Take

Tom has come to Australia from Seattle for a medical conference, bringing with him his new wife Heather and his two children Olivia and Owen. Heather has had a hard time getting onside with the children. After a visit to Alice Springs, they have flown to Melbourne for the conference at which Tom is the keynote speaker. The family is keen to see Australian fauna and they end up on Dutch Island just off the Melbourne coast. Tom is driving a powerful car and ends up hitting and killing a cyclist. Fearful that they will not get off the island, Heather persuades Tom to hide the body. When they are safely off the island they will report the accident to the police. Just as they are about to board the ferry, the family catches up with them..

From that point on, the action is full of suspense, sort of hold-your-breath incredible. The family on Dutch Island are feral, bent on revenge for the death of the cyclist. The family is headed by Ma who is determined that the American tourists are to pay for what they have done, but also that they are not to destroy the lifestyle that she and her family have established.

Written in New York during the pandemic, this is McKinty's second stand-alone. There are aspects that I seriously question the credibility of, but part of me wants to accept the possibilities. An excellent read.

My Rating: 4.6

I've also read

FIFTY GRAND
4.6, THE COLD COLD GROUND
4.8, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET
4.6, FALLING GLASS
4.9, IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE
4.2, BELFAST NOIR, Adrian McKinty (ed) and Stuart Neville (ed)
4.8, THE CHAIN

Review: THE CHAIN, Adrian McKinty

• this edition published by Hachette Australia 2019
• ISBN 978-0-7336-4251-7
• 357 pages
• source: review copy from publisher

Synopsis (publisher)

VICTIM. KIDNAPPER. CRIMINAL. YOU WILL BECOME EACH ONE.

The morning starts like any other. Rachel Klein drops her daughter, Kylie, at the bus stop and heads into her day. But then a phone call changes everything. A woman has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will ever see her again is if she pays a ransom - and kidnaps another child. The caller is a mother herself, whose son has also been abducted, and if Rachel doesn't do exactly as she's told, both children will die. Rachel is now part of a terrifying scheme - The Chain.

The rules are simple: find the money, find your victim, and then commit a horrible act you'd have thought yourself incapable of just 24 hours ago. Rachel is an ordinary woman, but over the coming days she will be pushed beyond ordinary limits to save her daughter. What the anonymous masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children. But what they don't know is that they may have met their match.

Can Rachel be the one person to finally break The Chain?

#DONTBREAKTHECHAIN

My Take

We all remember those chain letters from childhood.  My parents always told us to burn them, not to do whatever they are asked you to do. I always had a little bit of fear about what retribution might be wreaked on me if I broke the chain. And surely the people who sent me the letter were my friends and could be trusted?

The first half of the book deals with Rachel's case. All she knows for sure is that someone has taken her daughter Kylie from the bus stop. There is a ransom to be paid and then Rachel has to kidnap someone-else's child and Kylie will not be released until the ransom for that child has been paid. There are rules about who Rachel can contact, the ransom has to be paid into a bit-coin account, and the whole process might take at least 4 or 5 days. And if things don't happen to schedule then the ransom might be raised. Once Rachel has completed paying the ransom then she must seach for another victim. Meantime she is occasionally contacted by people who have been earlier links in the chain, to reassure her that she will get Kylie back if she plays by the rules.

People in the Chain are linked together by their need to keep their own children alive. The person who has taken Kylie is still waiting for her son to be returned, and that won't happen until Rachel completes both steps in the process: paid the ransom, and kidnapped a child herself.

Once she has Kylie back then Rachel begins to think about who the monsters are started the Chain.

An engrossing read, a real page turner, but very noir. It may not be your cup of tea.
The book has the reader asking questions of yourself.

My rating: 4.8

I've also read
FIFTY GRAND
4.6, THE COLD COLD GROUND
4.8, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET
4.6, FALLING GLASS
4.9, IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE
4.2, BELFAST NOIR, Adrian McKinty (ed) and Stuart Neville (ed)

About the author
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s. His father was a boilermaker and ship's engineer and his mother a secretary. Adrian went to Oxford University on a full scholarship to study philosophy before emigrating to the United States to become a high school English teacher. His debut crime novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Dagger Award and was optioned by Universal Pictures. His books have won the Edgar Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award and have been translated into over 20 languages. Adrian is a reviewer and critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Irish Times and The Guardian. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Review: BELFAST NOIR by Adrian McKinty (editor), Stuart Neville (editor) - audio book

• available from audible.com
• Written by: Adrian McKinty (editor), Stuart Neville (editor)
• Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies, Gerard Doyle, John Keating, Terry Donnelly
• Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins 
• Series: Akashic Books: Noir
• Unabridged Audiobook
• published 2014

Synopsis (publisher)

Reflecting a city still divided, Belfast Noir serves as a record of a city transitioning to normalcy, or perhaps as a warning that underneath the fragile peace darker forces still lurk. 

Featuring brand-new stories by: Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Arlene Hunt, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Steve Cavanagh, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar, and Gerard Brennan. 

From the introduction by Adrian McKinty & Stuart Neville: "Few European cities have had as disturbed and violent a history as Belfast over the last half-century. For much of that time the Troubles (1968–1998) dominated life in Ireland's second-biggest population centre, and during the darkest days of the conflict - in the 1970s and 1980s - riots, bombings, and indiscriminate shootings were tragically commonplace. The British army patrolled the streets in armoured vehicles and civilians were searched for guns and explosives before they were allowed entry into the shopping district of the city centre... Belfast is still a city divided... You can see Belfast's bloodstains up close and personal. This is the city that gave the world its worst ever maritime disaster, and turned it into a tourist attraction; similarly, we are perversely proud of our thousands of murders, our wounds constantly on display. You want noir? How about a painting the size of a house, a portrait of a man known to have murdered at least a dozen human beings in cold blood? Or a similar house-sized gable painting of a zombie marching across a post-apocalyptic wasteland with an AK-47 over the legend UVF: Prepared for Peace - Ready for War. As Lee Child has said, Belfast is still 'the most noir place on earth.'"

Part I: City of Ghosts
“The Undertaking” by Brian McGilloway (Roselawn)
“Poison” by Lucy Caldwell (Dundonald)
“Wet with Rain” by Lee Child (Great Victoria Street)
“Taking It Serious” by Ruth Dudley Edwards (Falls Road)

Part II: City of Walls
“Ligature” by Gerard Brennan (Hydebank)
“Belfast Punk REP” by Glenn Patterson (Ann Street)
“The Reservoir” by Ian McDonald (Holywood)

Part III: City of Commerce
“The Grey” by Steve Cavanagh (Laganside, Queens Island)
“Rosie Grant’s Finger” by Claire McGowan (Titanic Quarter)
“Out of Time” by Sam Millar (Hill Street)
“Die Like a Rat” by Garbhan Downey (Malone Road)

Part IV: Brave New City
“Corpse Flowers” by Eoin McNamee (Ormeau Embankment)
“Pure Game” by Arlene Hunt (Sydenham)
“The Reveller” by Alex Barclay (Shore Road)

 
My Take

Not a set of stories for the faint-hearted, most of these are truly noir.
As with most short story collections, there are some that are very good, clever, or amusing, but there are others that tempt you to skip to the next.
They do make the reader appreciate that Irish noir fiction is alive, well, and strong.
Surprisingly, apart from the introduction, there is not a contribution from either of the editors.

Read a feature on Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty, and Lee Child at the Wall Street Journal.

Listen to an interview with editors Stuart Neville and Adrian McKinty at RTÉ Arts Radio.

My rating: 4.2

I've read and reviewed
McKinty, Adrian:
FIFTY GRAND
4.6, THE COLD COLD GROUND
4.8, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET
4.6, FALLING GLASS
4.9, IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE

Neville, Stuart:
THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST
4.8, THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND

Review: IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE, Adrian McKinty

• first published in 2014
  
• This edition published by Serpent's Tail 2014
• ISBN 978-1846688201
• 326 pages
• #3 in the Sean Duffy Trilogy
• borrowed from my local library

Synopsis (publisher)

The third book in the Sean Duffy thriller series.A spectacular escape and a man-hunt that could change the future of a nation - and lay one man's past to rest.

Sean Duffy's got nothing. And when you've got nothing to lose, you have everything to gain. So when MI5 come knocking, Sean knows exactly what they want, and what he'll want in return, but he hasn't got the first idea how to get it.Of course he's heard about the spectacular escape of IRA man Dermot McCann from Her Majesty's Maze prison. And he knew, with chilly certainty, that their paths would cross.

But finding Dermot leads Sean to an old locked room mystery, and into the kind of danger where you can lose as easily as winning.From old betrayals and ancient history to 1984's most infamous crime, Sean tries not to fall behind in the race to annihilation. Can he outrun the most skilled terrorist the IRA ever created? And will the past catch him first?

 My Take

This story focusses on events in 1983 and 1984: first of all the breakout of a number of IRA terrorists from the Maze prison and then the subsequent IRA bombings of 1984.

And along the way, under the guise of investigating cold cases, Sean Duffy begins to investigate the accidental death of Lizzie Fitzpatrick. This is a locked room mystery, but the coroner had not been satisfied that the death was accidental and returned an open verdict. Mary Fitzpatrick has always been convinced it was murder but no one could envisage how it happened. But why was Lizzie changing a light bulb in the dark, balancing precariously on the bar?

The locked room mystery adds an extra filip to this story. In his teens Sean Duffy had been at school with Dermot McCann, and had known the Fitzpatrick family. I also liked the way McKinty has definitely established a setting and time frame.

Sean Duffy will do almost anything to regain his place in CID but how much is he controlling his destiny?

This probably is the best of the Sean Duffy trilogy, but only by a hair's whisker.

My rating: 4.9

I've also reviewed
FIFTY GRAND
4.6, THE COLD COLD GROUND - Sean Duffy #1
4.8, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET - Sean Duffy #2
4.6, FALLING GLASS

About the author
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied politics and philosophy at Oxford University and then emigrated to New York in 1993. He lived in Harlem for seven years working at various jobs, with various degrees of legality, and in 2000 he moved to Denver, Colorado to become a high school English teacher.

In 2008 he emigrated again this time to Melbourne, Australia with his wife and kids. Adrian’s first crime novel, Dead I Well May Be, was shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. The sequel to that book, The Dead Yard, was picked as one of the 10 best books of the year by Booklist and won the Audie Award for best crime fiction novel. 

The first book in the Sean Duffy series, The Cold Cold Ground, won the 2013 Spinetingler Award for best novel. The second Sean Duffy book, I Hear The Sirens In The Street was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award.

Review: FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty - audio book

• from Audible.com
• Written by: Adrian McKinty
• stand-alone novel published in 2011 
• Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
• Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins 
• Format: Unabridged 

Synopsis (Audible.com)

Richard Coulter is a man who has everything. His beautiful new wife is pregnant, his upstart airline is undercutting the competition and moving from strength to strength, his diversification into the casino business in Macau has been successful, and his fabulous Art Deco house on an Irish cliff top has just been featured in Architectural Digest. 

But then, for some reason, his ex-wife Rachel doesn’t keep her side of the custody agreement and vanishes off the face of the earth with Richard’s two daughters. Richard hires Killian, a formidable ex-enforcer for the IRA, to track her down before Rachel, a recovering drug addict, harms herself or the girls.

My Take

This makes very good listening.

Killian comes out of retirement to find Richard Coulter's wife - the money on offer is far too good. Half a million dollars seems a lot of money for dealing with a custody case. At first Rachel Coulter alone knows why her ex-husband is having her hunted down. There's a lot more at stake than two little girls.

The tension rises as Coulter pours more resources into the hunt. Killian realises that he himself is being tracked.

This is a difficult book to review without revealing too much of the story and so I'm not going to tell you much more. Despite his background as an IRA enforcer Killian comes over as a likeable character, but his willingness to be ruthless also comes in handy. The story is based mainly in Ireland.

My rating: 4.6

I've also reviewed
FIFTY GRAND
4.6, THE COLD COLD GROUND
4.8, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET
 

2013 Ned Kelly Shortlists announced

http://austcrimewriters.com/content/2013-ned-kelly-awards

The following links are to the reviews created on Fair Dinkum Crime.

Best First Fiction

Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann ­ THE MARMALADE FILES
Zane Lovitt - THE MIDNIGHT PROMISE
Paul Anderson - THE ROBBERS
Sue Williams - MURDER WITH THE LOT
Andrew Grimes - THE RICHMOND CONSPIRACY

Best Fiction

Robert Gott - THE HOLIDAY MURDERS
Katherine Howell - WEB OF DECEIT
Geoffrey McGeachin - BLACKWATTLE CREEK
Adrian McKinty - I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET
Malla Nunn - SILENT VALLEY

The links below take you to various reviews

True Crime

Robin De Crespigny - THE PEOPLE SMUGGLER
Belinda Hawkins - EVERY PARENTS NIGHTMARE
Steve Lillebuen - THE DEVIL'S CINEMA
Derek Pedley - DEAD BY FRIDAY
Mark Tedeschi QC ­ EUGENIA

Review: I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET, Adrian McKinty - audio book

• this unabridged version available from Audible
• Book published 2013
• #2 in the Sean Duffy series (The Troubles Trilogy)
• Narrated by Gerard Doyle
• length 9 hrs 42 mins

Synopsis (Audible)

A torso in a suitcase looks like an impossible case, but Sean Duffy isn’t easily deterred, especially when his floundering love life leaves him in need of a distraction. So with detective constables McCrabban and McBride, he goes to work identifying the victim.

The torso turns out to be all that’s left of an American tourist who once served in the U.S. military. What was he doing in Northern Ireland in the midst of the 1982 Troubles? The trail leads to the doorstep of a beautiful, flame-haired, twenty-something widow, whose husband died at the hands of an IRA assassination team just a few months before.

Suddenly Duffy is caught between his romantic instincts, gross professional misconduct, and powerful men he should know better than to mess with. These include British intelligence, the FBI, and local paramilitary death squads - enough to keep even the savviest detective busy. Duffy’s growing sense of self-doubt isn’t helping. But as a legendarily stubborn man, he doesn’t let that stop him from pursuing the case to its explosive conclusion.

My Take

This is the sequel to THE COLD, COLD GROUND which I reviewed last year. Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles in 1982. When a male torso turns up in a suitcase, the suitcase turns out to have belonged to a man murdered by the IRA the previous year. The widow lives on an isolated estate and from the beginning Detective Inspector Sean Duffy can see that there are elements of her story about her husband's murder that don't quite jell. One thing leads to another and Sean identifies the body as that belonging to an American tourist. Even there, there is something wrong with the story.

With his passion for tying up loose ends Sean eventually follows the story even when he has been expressly warned off. This is noir crime fiction laced with Sean's own peculiar sense of humour. There's not just the blackness in the plot, but blackness in the setting - Northern Ireland on the brink of economic disaster, its last remaining industry whimpering to its death.

Adrian McKinty is a master story teller, the writing well polished, the characters well drawn. The dangers of living and working in Northern Ireland in the Troubles are vividly brought to life. He takes us to a time and place few of us have experienced first hand.

The narrator Gerard Doyle does an excellent job.

My rating: 4.8

See Bernadette's review.

Review: THE COLD COLD GROUND, Adrian McKinty

• Serpent's Tail 2012
• ISBN 9-781846-688225
• 332 pages
• Kindle edition now available (to Australians at least) 
• Source: review copy kindly sent to Fair Dinkum Crime by the author.

Book Description (Amazon)

There may be troubles ahead...Northern Ireland. Spring 1981. Hunger strikes. Riots. Power cuts. A homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera. And a young woman's suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. On the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things - and people - aren't always what they seem.

Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It's no easy job - especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA, but last seen discussing business with someone from the UVF. Add to that the fact that as a Catholic policemen, it doesn't matter which side he's on, because nobody trusts him - and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation. Fast-paced, evocative and brutal, "The Cold, Cold Ground" is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles - and a cop treading a thin, thin line.

My take

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.

My rating: 4.6

Other reviews to check:

There is really no shortage of reviews of McKinty's work and this latest novel. McKinty has listed many of them in the sidebar of his blog.

You can read a review of my latest novel, The Cold Cold Ground, in The Guardian, here. You can peruse the review from the Irish Independent, here or the review in The Times, here. The Glasgow Herald's verdict is here and The Sydney Morning Herald chips in, here. If you want to know what all the extraordinary fuss is about you can be a good chap and get The Cold Cold Ground on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Audible.com or at your local bookshop.

Closer to home see Bernadette's review on Fair Dinkum Crime and Peter's at Detectives Beyond Borders

I have also reviewed FIFTY GRAND

About the author

Adrian McKinty is currently living in Melbourne. Check his blog here.
You might also like to read this post.
Amazon.com lists 11 titles by McKinty, although Fantastic Fiction lists 12.

Review: FIFTY GRAND, Adrian McKinty

Serpent's Tail, 2009, ISBN, 978-1-846668-723-5, 308 pages

When Mercado was 13, her father walked out of her life. He committed treason, hijacked a ferry, and escaped to Mexico. He never came back, never wrote, and left Mercado, her brother Ricky, and their mother to fend for themselves as best they could, which wasn't well. Mercado becomes a cop in Cuba. And then 14 years on her brother is told their father has been killed in Colorado, the victim of a hit and run. Mercado's brother Ricky is allowed to go to Colorado to make the funeral arrangements, and comes back convinced there was something strange about their father's death. That idea eats at Mercado until she decides she has to go to Colorado herself.

Set in a world of drug smuggling and illegal immigration into the USA, in a Colorado ski resort where the local sheriff turns a blind eye, and takes his cut, FIFTY GRAND almost lost me in the second chapter with incredibly graphic violence. The fact that the third chapter is in a different time frame, and much calmer, kept me reading. By its end I knew what Ricky had found out, and what Mercado intended to do.

I once had a book where the chapters were un-numbered, each one packaged. The reader was invited to read the chapters in any order of their choice. That's not quite what McKinty has done here. What he seems to have done is taken one of the last chapters and dealt it first, and then a middle chapter and dealt it second (that's the gruesome one). By the time you've read them, and then the more sedate chapter 3, you'll be hooked. You'll want to know why those first two chapters happened. This is a very powerful book, with a twist in the tail (or is it tale?) that I bet you don't see coming.

My rating: 4.6

Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He studied politics at Oxford University and after a failed legal career he moved to the US in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, postman, construction worker, barman, rugby coach and bookstore clerk before becoming a school teacher in Denver. You get the feeling in FIFTY GRAND that he knows Colorado well. In 2008 he moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with his wife and kids. He now describes himself as an Irish novelist currently living in Oz. You can learn a lot more about McKinty on his blog: the psychopathology of everyday life.

His books for adults:
Michael Forsythe series
1. Dead I Well May Be (2003)
2. The Dead Yard (2006)
3. The Bloomsday Dead (2007)

Novels
Orange Rhymes With Everything (1997)
Hidden River (2005)
Fifty Grand (2009)

Other reviews:

• In the Guardian by John O'Connell
• by Declan Burke
• by Gerard Brennan
• by Corey Wilde
• an interview on Aust Crime