Adrian McKinty (Gun Street Girl) writes again about the tense world of 1980s Northern Ireland in Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly (a line from a Tom Waits song that aptly sums up the violent atmosphere). As the novel opens, Detective Sean Duffy, one of the only Catholics on the Royal Ulster Constabulary force, is being marched at gunpoint into a boggy wilderness. Unknown villains have come calling for Duffy's head, and even Duffy's quick tongue is unlikely to save him.
The story then flashes back a few weeks, to when a low-level drug dealer turned up dead with a crossbow bolt in his back. It seemed like an open-and-shut case, but the more Duffy investigated, the more he was convinced that somebody--quite possibly a high-ranking officer in the RUC--wanted him to think it was an easy solve. And so, naturally, someone as stubborn, tenacious and irreverently honest as Duffy couldn't stop digging. But will it be the death of him?
Often laugh-out-loud funny, with a vivid Irish setting, McKinty's sixth Sean Duffy novel is sure to appeal to fans of Ian Rankin or Tana French as well as to history buffs who remember the days of "the Troubles." Set during the escalation of violence following the March 1988 deaths of IRA volunteers in Gibraltar, Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly is simultaneously a gripping thriller and a fascinating history. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm