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WINTERLAND
by Alan Glynn
Minotaur Books, February 2010
320 pages
$24.99
ISBN: 0312539223


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

When Noel Rafferty is gunned down by a balaclava-wearing assailant in the smoking "garden" of a Dublin pub, all assume that his dubious underworld connections have somehow caught up with him. When, later the same day, his uncle, also called Noel Rafferty, is found dead in his car, having evidently driven off the road while over the limit for drink, it appears, at least to the Guards, as a sad coincidence. But his young sister, Gina, a software designer and a very determined young woman, cannot accept this verdict. In the first place, her brother was not a drinker and he'd been stone-cold sober when she'd seen him leave. And then there's the question of why so many people are trying to get her to stop asking awkward questions.

Brother Noel was involved with a great new property development, a kind of mini-Canary Wharf, rising in glassy splendour over the Dublin docklands, along with a major property developer, Paddy Norton, and a politician, Larry Bolger, who is slated to become Taoiseach (leader of the Irish Parliament) at any moment. Conceived when the Celtic Tiger was still roaring, the current economic climate makes developments of this sort considerably chancier. So there are powerful interests at work seeking to smooth things over as quickly as possible. But, unsurprisingly, the more they try, the worse things get.

Ken Bruen's blurb calls this a "noir masterpiece." Now, I'm certainly not one to argue with Bruen, but I'm not altogether sure that this really can be called noir, except in the most general sense. What it is, however, is a thoroughly contemporary, extremely well-written, and altogether serious approach to the all-too-common sort of modern crime that flows from boundless greed and a sense of personal entitlement that can justify almost any violent or corrupt act as simply necessary. As for "masterpiece," well, time will tell. But for now, you'd have to look hard to find another current crime novel this engrossing and this challenging.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, February 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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