I Hear the Sirens in the Street

PRAISE FOR THE COLD COLD GROUND,

THE FIRST OF ADRIAN MCKINTY’S SEAN

DUFFY THRILLERS

“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 a brilliant novel with its own unique voice” Stuart Neville

“It’s undoubtedly McKinty’s finest … Written with intelligence, insight and wit, McKinty exposes the cancer of corruption at all levels of society at that time. Sean Duffy is a compelling detective, the evocation of 1980s Northern Ireland is breathtaking and the atmosphere authentically menacing. A brilliant piece of work which does for NI what Peace’s Red Riding Quartet did for Yorkshire” Brian McGilloway

“The setting represents an extraordinarily tense scenario in itself, but the fact that Duffy is a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant RUC adds yet another fascinating twist to McKinty’s neatly crafted plot … a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground” Declan Burke, Irish Times

“The Cold Cold Ground is a fearless trip into Northern Ireland in the 1980s: riots, hunger strikes, murders – yet Adrian McKinty tells a very personal story of an ordinary cop trying to hunt down a serial killer” John McFetridge

“McKinty’s The Cold Cold Ground has got onto my five best books of the year list as it is riveting, brilliant and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland” Ken Bruen

“The Cold Cold Ground confirms McKinty as a writer of substance … 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 … The Cold Cold Ground is a crime novel, fast-paced, intricate and genre to the core” Eoin McNamee, Guardian

“Adrian McKinty is the voice of the new Northern Irish generation but he’s not afraid to examine the past. This writer is a legend in the making and The Cold Cold Ground is the latest proof of this” Gerard Brennan

“Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy could well become a cult figure … McKinty 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 marvellous sense of time and place … he manages to catch the brooding atmosphere of the 1980s and to tell a ripping yarn at the same time … There will be many readers waiting for the next adventure of the dashing and intrepid Sergeant Duffy” Maurice Hayes, Irish Independent

“McKinty [has] a razor-sharp ear for the local dialogue and a feeling for the bleak time and place that was Ulster in the early 80s, and pairs them with a wry wicked wit … If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written” Peter Millar, The Times

“Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it’s easy to see why on the evidence of this novel, the first in a projected trilogy of police procedurals. At times The Cold Cold Ground has the feel of James Ellroy, the prose is that focused and intense, but then there are moments of darkest humour, with just a hint of the retro feel of Life On Mars thrown in” Doug Johnstone, Herald