“Another winner, with pathos, insight, sardonic humor, and lyrical descriptions that counterpoint the red-hot sequences to superb effect.” Guardian (London)
Description
In this noir thriller by a New York Times bestselling and Edgar award-winning author, a retired IRA fixer takes a lucrative last job finding the ex-wife and daughters of a wealthy airline owner.
Richard Coulter is a man who has everything. His beautiful new wife is pregnant, his upstart airline is undercutting the competition and moving from strength to strength, his diversification into the casino business in Macau has been successful, and his fabulous Art Deco house on an Irish cliff top has just been featured in Architectural Digest. But then, for some reason, his ex-wife Rachel doesn’t keep her side of the custody agreement and vanishes off the face of the earth with Richard’s two daughters. Richard hires Killian, a formidable ex-enforcer for the IRA, to track her down before Rachel, a recovering drug addict, harms herself or the girls. As Killian follows Rachel’s trail, he begins to see that there is a lot more to this case than first meets the eye and that a thirty-year-old secret is going to put all of them in terrible danger.
McKinty is at his continent-hopping, well-paced, evocative best in this thriller, moving between his native Ireland and distant cities within a skin-of-his-teeth timeframe.
Praise
“Another winner, with pathos, insight, sardonic humor, and lyrical descriptions that counterpoint the red-hot sequences to superb effect.” Guardian (London)
“McKinty is a streetwise, energetic gunslinger of a writer, firing off volleys of sassy dialogue and explosive action that always delivers what it has promised the reader. The story is skillfully constructed, and the pace is always full throttle forwards…McKinty zaps the story across countries and continents and, either through detailed research or personal experience, renders the locations convincingly. But the bulk of the story’s setting springs from his intimately observed landscape of the North. In the strongest and most impressive part of the novel McKinty blends the landscape of an island in Upper Lough Erne, insightful characterization, and narrative in a particularly creative way. Despite the genre’s frequent reliance on resolution, McKinty’s teasing ending deliberately withholds that very thing from his reader, and you sense that Killian may have more stories unfolding ahead of him, and still more traveling across the world’s seas, before he’s finally allowed to disappear into retirement.” Irish Times
“McKinty is a streetwise, energetic gunslinger of a writer, firing off volleys of sassy dialogue and explosive action that always delivers what it has promised the reader…Skillfully constructed and the pace is always full throttle forwards” Irish Times
Details
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Release Day | Feb 28, 2011 |
| Release Date | March 1, 2011 |
| Release Date Machine | 1298937600 |
| Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
| Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
| Categories | Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thriller & Suspense, Suspense |
Author Bio
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles. His father was a welder in Harland and Wolff—the shipyard where they built the Titanic; his mother was a school lunch lady and secretary. Adrian went to Oxford University on a full scholarship where he studied philosophy.
Emigrating first to America and then Australia he found work as a door-to-door salesman, a driver, a bookstore clerk, a barman, a high school English teacher, and a semipro rugby player.
His debut crime novel, Dead I Well May Be, was shortlisted for the 2004 Dagger Award and was optioned by Universal Pictures. He is the author of more than a dozen crime novels that have been translated into over forty languages. He has won the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Barry Award, the Macavity Award, the International Thriller Writers Award, and is a three-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award.
His 2020 novel The Chain was a New York Times bestseller and appeared on twenty-five best-of-the-year lists. His 2022 novel The Island was an instant New York Times bestseller and made five best-of-the-year lists including those of the London Times and the New York Times.
Adrian is a member of the Linnean Society and the National Audubon Society. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
Narrator Bio
Gerard Doyle, a seasoned audio narrator, he has been awarded dozens of AudioFile Earphones Awards, was named a Best Voice in Young Adult Fiction in 2008, and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He was born of Irish parents and raised and educated in England. In Great Britain he has enjoyed an extensive career in both television and repertory theater and toured nationally and internationally with the English Shakespeare Company. He has appeared in London’s West End in the gritty musical The Hired Man. In America he has appeared on Broadway in The Weir and on television in New York Undercover and Law & Order. He has taught drama at Ross School for the several years.
Overview
In this noir thriller by a New York Times bestselling and Edgar award-winning author, a retired IRA fixer takes a lucrative last job finding the ex-wife and daughters of a wealthy airline owner.
Richard Coulter is a man who has everything. His beautiful new wife is pregnant, his upstart airline is undercutting the competition and moving from strength to strength, his diversification into the casino business in Macau has been successful, and his fabulous Art Deco house on an Irish cliff top has just been featured in Architectural Digest. But then, for some reason, his ex-wife Rachel doesn’t keep her side of the custody agreement and vanishes off the face of the earth with Richard’s two daughters. Richard hires Killian, a formidable ex-enforcer for the IRA, to track her down before Rachel, a recovering drug addict, harms herself or the girls. As Killian follows Rachel’s trail, he begins to see that there is a lot more to this case than first meets the eye and that a thirty-year-old secret is going to put all of them in terrible danger.
McKinty is at his continent-hopping, well-paced, evocative best in this thriller, moving between his native Ireland and distant cities within a skin-of-his-teeth timeframe.