The Cold Cold Ground: A Detective Sean Duffy Novel (The Troubles Trilogy) - Tapa blanda

"The Cold Cold Ground is a razor-sharp thriller set against the backdrop of a country in chaos, told with style, courage, and dark-as-night wit. Adrian McKinty channels Dennis Lehane, David Peace, and Joseph Wambaugh to create an utterly brilliant novel with its own unique voice."

"Adrian McKinty's The Cold Cold Ground has gotten onto my five best of the year list as it is riveting, brilliant, and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland."

"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written."

"The rage, dissent, and blind self-interest of 'the Troubles' are the perfect backdrop for this brutal noir masterpiece.... For all of its brutality, the book is subtle and nuanced.... Duffy [is] the keen observer, the perfect protagonist. A righteous man who unwillingly takes his pursuit of justice into the realm of moral ambiguity."

"McKinty belongs to a crew of much praised Irish crime novelists that includes John Connolly, Declan Burkem and Ken Bruen."

"Tropes are tropes for good reason. The important crime fiction ones are present and accounted for here--a serial killer who purposely leaves clues, a cop who's on to him, procedural and forensic nitty-gritty. Yet McKinty can startle with bouts of lyrical scene-setting that could only come from the fingertips of someone who grew up in the environment...Your reviewer was born the year The Cold Cold Ground is set in, and such passages work better at painting a picture than any episode of Reeling in the Years."

"Written in a terse style, the novel is a literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time as it is with providing the genre's conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee, and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."

"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of this novel, The Cold Cold Ground, the first in a projected trilogy of police procedurals."

"No question, The Cold Cold Ground is an exciting launch for what is sure to be an anticipated crime series. Great detective stories are built on three key elements--setting, story, and protagonist--and this one deploys each one magnificently. The setting--Northern Ireland in 1981, during the hunger strikes--is portrayed with frightening detail. The clever story evolves slowly as plot points are pinned to cultural biases that transcend "The Troubles"--for example, homosexuality and unwed motherhood. Police detective Sean Duffy wins us over chapter by chapter with his tenacity; his swaggering, witty dialogue; and his record collection--he spins The Velvet Underground when in need of a lift. The audiobook exceeds all expectations because of narrator Gerard Doyle. His storytelling is understated, and his dialect work is remarkable. This is the ninth collaboration between author and narrator, and this team totally rocks. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award."

"A journey into a terrifying and almost dreamlike labyrinth of violence and betrayal, The Cold Cold Ground certainly won't let the reader go. It's the first novel of a trilogy that promises to be a superb read."