I like books that combine mystery/thriller with a location riven by complicated political situations, and this book is set in Northern Ireland in 1990, towards the end of the Troubles. Those years of Irish/British history are not something that I understand well, so this book was a good entry point.

The combination of mystery with political complexity will be enough to get me to buy a book, but there needs to be something more to get me to finish, and I truly liked the spare style of this writer. Parts of the book read like a screenplay, but it was an effective way to move from one location to another. There was a poetic feel to it, but a guttural, gritty poetry, not flying on the wings of a butterfly poetry.

The book’s premise is that the narrator, Police Detective Sean Duffy, is retiring and his last case is that of a missing fifteen year old tinker girl who may or may not have been a prostitute. The book has some twists and effective dialogue. At times it's overly wordy. There were plenty of situations/scenes that probably could have been cut, but the journey was enjoyable, and the greater political situation was effectively woven in. There were also several action scenes that were well drawn if foreshadowed a little too much. I ended up thinking that I probably needed to read the earlier books to truly understand one of the side plots, but this writer is worth reading, and I already bought book one so I could read the series from the beginning.

My Take: Worth a read but maybe start with the first book and move on from there