Winterland
Alan Glynn
Minotaur, Feb 2 2010, $25.99
ISBN: 9780312539221
In a pub in Dublin, someone guns down minor league drug dealer Noel Rafferty. Later that same night his uncle with the identical name dies in a strange car accident. The police proclaim the first death as a gangland homicide and the second as a coincidental accident.
Gina Rafferty rejects the police summation while the cops and most of the family reject her belief that someone sinister is getting away with a double murder. She is ignored because she grieves for her nephew and her brother. Mourning but outraged, Gina investigates the connections between her two dead relatives besides DNA and death. She knew her brother worked on the Richmond Plaza project with avaricious developer Paddy Norton, who has connections with avaricious politician Larry Bolger. Gina is convinced these two powerful greedy partners are behind the deaths in her family and sets out to find the proof.
The key to this terrific Irish Noir is the cast including the city is super solid as the key players come across genuine at a time the Irish economy is in the toilet and about to be flushed to sea. Gina is obstinate and courageous yet treated like a grieving dolt so even as the cops, family, the villains and others warn her to stop her inquiry they treat her as a harmless idiot until the realization she is closing in on the truth. Winterland is a super amateur sleuth as the truth may free you but not in this case.
Harriet Klausner
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