McKinty's previous book, Falling Glass, was an Audible.com Best Thriller of 2011 Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman's suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things-and people-aren't always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It's no easy job-especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. Add to this the fact that, as a Catholic policeman, it doesn't matter which side he's on, because nobody trusts him, and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation. Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles-and of a cop treading a thin, thin line. "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." "The Cold Cold Ground confirms McKinty as a writer of substance…What makes McKinty a cut above the rest is the quality of his prose. His driven, spat-out sentences are more accessible than James Ellroy's edge-of-reason staccato, and he can be lyric…The names of David Peace and Ellroy are evoked too often in relation to young crime writers, but McKinty shares their method of using the past as a template for the present. The stories and textures may belong to a different period, but the power of technique and intent makes of them the here and now. There's food for thought in McKinty's writing, but he is careful not to lose the force of his narrative in introspection. The Cold Cold Ground is a crime novel, fast-paced, intricate, and genre to the core." "Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy…could well become a cult figure…McKinty has established a good track record in the genre and in his return to his native sod for he shows that he has not lost his touch or his eye for the bizarre and the macabre or his ear for the Belfast accent and argot…McKinty creates a marvelous sense of time and place; an evocation of darkness and horror, of corruption and collusion, of the fraught life of a policeman, of the domination of areas by paramilitary groups at war with each other and with the British state but colluding on drugs and criminality, the immediacy of death and the cheapness of life…A ripping yarn…There will be many readers waiting for the next adventure of the dashing and intrepid Sergeant Duffy." "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 Th

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