Russian Bear Reviews

Reviews: Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty, A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black ...

Three recent titles confirm that Irish crime writing is in a rare state of rude health, in the process showcasing the diversity of the kinds of novels Irish crime authors are writing these days.

Falling Glass is Adrian McKinty's sixth offering, a thriller in which an underworld enforcer, Killian, is commissioned to track down Rachel, the ex-wife of a wealthy Northern Ireland businessman, who has absconded with his two daughters. Naturally, things do not go smoothly for Killian, for the most part because a ruthless killer, a Russian soldier and veteran of the brutal conflict in Chechnya , is also on the woman's trail. Framed by an increasingly violent game of one-upmanship, the story hurtles down the tortuously twisting byways of rural Northern Ireland.

However, a number of elements set Falling Glass apart from conventional shoot-'em-up thrillers. McKinty has established himself as a writer who blends riveting plots, a muscular kind of poetry and blackly comic flourishes, investing his fully rounded characters with thoughtful insights that frequently veer off at tangents into something akin to philosophy. Killian, for example, is of Pavee origin, and carries with him the Pavees' traditions, mythologies and shelta language. Settled himself, Killian has tried to leave behind both his own kind and the criminal life by investing his ill-gotten gains in property, and studying architecture. It's a perverse choice for a former nomad, and McKinty deftly counterpoints Killian's peripatetic wanderings in search of Rachel and her two girls with Killian's own journey towards some kind of rapprochement between his conflicting instincts, building tension all the while, until the story explodes in an orgy of violence in which the dark deeds that lay at the heart of the Peace Process are finally revealed.

On the face of it, the genteel tone and setting of Benjamin Black 's fourth novel, A Death in Summer, could hardly be further from McKinty's harshly noir modernity. Set in Dublin during the Fifties, and written by John Banville under an open pseudonym, the Black novels have a reputation for erring on the "cosy" side, an illusion fostered by an opening which suggests a homage to Agatha Christie , when newspaper tycoon Richard "Diamond Dick" Jewell is found in his Kildare mansion, having apparently blown his brains out with a shotgun.

A suicide verdict, however, is not accepted by Inspector Hackett and his lugubrious foil Dr Quirke, the pathologist with the morbid fascination with death and its consequences. Together the pair embark on an investigation which the mores of Irish society of the time require to be conducted in secret, lest the stigma of suicide be given a public airing.

Review: A Russian Bear (Russian Bear #1) by C.B. Conwy « Fullmoonbites

“To Mischa, life is simple. Doms are Doms and subs are for fucking, flogging, and bossing around. Until he meets Tom, that is. Tom is deeply offended when the stranger in the bar takes him for some kind of slave boy. Well, offended and more than a little excited by the thought of surrendering to Mischa. Mischa being Mischa, their meeting results in Tom losing his virginity in a way that’s hotter than even his wildest fantasies.”