Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sensitive, Tough, Risque and Revealing, 16 Feb 2005
Adrian McKinty comes from a small town near Belfast and was brought up during what the Irish call "The Troubles". He has written a novel that sings of the Irish tradition, the Irish Culture and the Irish addiction. How he has come to know all of this is a little bit of a mystery, and in the telling of this story we gain a little bit of knowledge of what is in his head. Alex, Alexander Lawson, is a junkie, a heroin addict and an ex-detective for the Northern Ireland police force. At a young age he joined the force and was promoted rapidly in to the detective division, until he was asked to resign for stealing the junk he was hired to protect. What is behind this"? Why would such an intelligent young man allow this to happen? Slowly, ever so slowly we come to learn a few of the reasons. Alex is wanted by the MI5- something is fishy in the drug world of Belfast, and the MI5 wants to know more and Alex is their boy. The MI5 frightens Alex; he can't be imprisoned and he needs to flee. Alex finds a ticket to the US in the guise of discovering just how his first girlfriend, Victoria Patawasti was murdered. The murder took place in Denver, Colorado and Alex and his friend, John are off to solve this murder. One thing after another happens, and Alex becomes involved in an environmental group that Victoria had worked for. There are several interesting people in this group and among them is Amber, the beautiful, blonde wife of one of the owners. But, also, something isn't right in this group, and Alex finds out exactly what the problem is. Within this mess he leaves several dead bodies behind, but makes a friend of Pat, an ex-firefighter who has HIV. Quite a collection of friends has this Alex- some kind, but most of them are dark and well, murderous. Alex is led throughout Colorado and starts to gather evidence that will convict one of the owners of the murder of his friend Victoria. But then something interesting happens, and the killer turns into someone we would never expect. Except we knew this was too black and white- we suspected something was not ok. The drug mess he left in Ireland is explained in several flashbacks and that is how we come to understand. And, yes, well, never mind, read this fast paced, brilliant book for yourself. Adrian McKinty has found a fan. He writes an intelligent mystery full of little bits of this and that, brilliantly executed and then just when you have it all figured out, BAM- you are wrong. Recommended for everyone who loves a mystery, who loves a sexy, violent novel. Enter at your own risk. prisrob
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mckinty could be the real thing, 15 April 2005
By A Customer
It may be time to start believing the reviews that are trickling out about this guy. I have only read Hidden River but it a stunning effort. Mckinty's writing is powerful and literary, at times quite breathtaking. Thank goodness there is still some uneveness in what is just his second novel. At times the plot is a little weak, a bit contrived. But no matter, to my mind, these are just imperfections in a crime novel that is far better than anything else being written at the moment. I have tried many of the mega-star crime/thriller writers; Connelly, Cornwell, Dan Brown (!) et al, and most I find poor writers and worst of all dull. If you have the same problem give McKinty a try, he writes like an angel but can also create heart-pumping action. If he can maintain or improve on this, he may in the process of resetting the genre standard.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Characters, Sub-Par Plotting, 2 Jun 2006
Set in the mid 1990s, this sequel to "Dead I May Well Be" finds former Ulster Royal Constabulary Detective Alex Lawson bumming around his Ulster suburb, carefully rationing his daily heroin hit and scrambling to come up with the money to pay his dealer. The previous book explained how the fast-rising prodigal policeman has fallen so low, but you don't have to know that story in order to follow this one. It seems that Alex discovered that high-level cops were tied into the drug trade carried out by various paramilitary factions, and found himself between a rock and hard place. Having removed himself from this precarious position, he's not at all pleased when a thug from Scotland Yard comes around and demands that he names names. Meanwhile, Alex's first and only love, Victoria Patawasti, is murdered in America. Fortuitously for him, her father hires Alex to fly to Denver to look into the matter. The police have a man in custody and have promised that he will get the death sentence (which is a little unlikely, since Colorado has executed exactly one person in the last thirty years and has a death row consisting of two people), but an anonymous letter has cast doubt upon that suspect. Eager to escape the Scotland Yard pressure, Alex jets off to America, with his pal John tagging along.
McKinty does a great job of portraying the experience of arriving in a foreign country. The Irishmen are jetlagged, a little unsure of the city's layout and where to stay, and Alex needs to find a heroin connection ASAP. Soon they're doing a little investigating, checking out the environmental non-profit Victoria worked for, and it's not long before they've identified the anonymous letter-writer. From here, however, things get somewhat pear-shaped and they find themselves literally on the run from the police. This is also the point where the story first started losing plausibility for me. The accident that leads to their needing to lay low isn't particularly convincing, nor is the foot chase in which they elude the cops, nor is the mixup in their identification, and the means by which they find a hideout is equally unlikely.
Eventually, Alex continues poking into the murder mystery, and manages to get himself hired by the environmental group as a door-to-door canvasser. The scenes where he gets trucked around to outlying suburbs to solicit funds are nicely written, however, they are merely a transparent plot device to put Alex into close contact with the blue blood brothers who run the group, and the beautiful wife of one of them. The problem is that it's totally improbable that these high-end society types would be out pounding the pavement with hourly workers and hitting the greasy pizza place afterward--it simply rings false (except for the one night they have a film crew). However, one or more of these three people are likely the killer and so McKinty has to invent some means for Alex to get close to them. By this point most readers will have identified the killer, but the story goes on and on for some time before finally confirming this.
McKinty generally writes well, although he's a little too keen to tell the reader outright about certain things long before they happen. This gives the story a kind of noirish, doomed feel, but removes a great deal of the suspense. There's also a fairly fundamental contradiction in the character of Alex: he's supposed to have been this genius cop, but McKinty only allows him to be so sporadically. When the plot needs to advance, Alex is smart, but then plenty other times he makes all kinds of elementary investigative mistakes. One might possibly write this off to his drug addiction, except there's no obvious correlation between when he's high and when he makes mistakes. Most egregious of all, the one time he's told about some solid physical evidence linking the killer to the murder, he seems to utterly forget about it. Meanwhile, the reader is left scratching their head about why he didn't just get that evidence and turn it over to the cops. The junkie ex-cop as protagonist is a fairly interesting premise, and the supporting cast of characters is quite colorful and well-drawn, but the plotting doesn't quite measure up and it's all a little unsatisfying.
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