The Cold, Cold Ground

The Cold, Cold Ground is the nth book by Adrian Mckinty which I've ended up listening to in Gerard Doyle's narrative voice.  At such point as I end up reading Fifty Grand, I'll have to make the agonizing choice of print vs audio, since Doyle didn't narrate that one, and the two seem inseparable to me.

In this novel, McKinty puts Doyle to the test, setting the novel near Belfast during the Troubles, with different accents coming thick & fast.  I, of course, can't tell one Irish accent from another (although the Rhodesian one was quite good, I thought), but the sounds give one an idea of the ... I'm not sure what to call it ... ethnic mix isn't right, neither is tribal identities, but Belfast at the time was very divided, the accents are a sort of metonymy for the conflict.  (On a side note, I thought the Doctor's accent came & went a bit, but that's a minor point).

That aside...  how was the actual book?  I quite liked it, although I've got to admit that a priori it wouldn't normally be the sort of book I'd tend to read.  The Troubles aren't really a period that grabs me particularly (although I also liked Eoin McNamee's Resurrection Man).  But McKinty's been a writer I enjoy reading since Dead I Well May Be, so I decided to give this one a shot.  After a lyrical beginning, Cold, Cold Ground is stylistically fairly restrained, which lets you focus on the very colorful events going on around Sean Duffy, the protagonist.  A Catholic cop living in a Protestant neighborhood, Duffy is not exactly marked out for a quiet life.  Here, he ends up involved in two murder investigations, one official and one on his own time (more or less).

One thing I liked about Cold, Cold Ground is that the story is very tied to its time and place, but at the same time don't feel didactic.  The Troubles form a necessary backdrop, but somehow it doesn't feel like McKinty wants to lecture me about them.  I guess I'm mostly thinking of Stuart Neville's Ghosts of Belfast, which felt pretty uninteresting to me, because it did feel very moralistic.  Not that McKinty's world lacks a moral center; Sean Duffy is a man with a clear moral compass, even as it leaves him in the occasional quandary.

Two last points.  The amazon review mentions a serial killer.  At this point in my life, I'm heartily sick of serial killer novels, but this one is sufficiently different to be interesting .  Even in the early stages, where it seems more standard, there's enough other stuff going on to keep the story vibrant.  Second, Duffy goes through a bit of a sexual awakening that felt kind of tacked-on (sorry if you're reading this, Adrian).  I assume it'll play out in the later novels of the trilogy, but it just felt kind of extraneous here.