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A review by vorpalblad
I Hear the Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty
5.0
4.5 ⭐ I'm so glad I found this series. In this second installment of the Sean Duffy series, McKinty pulls in the story of John DeLorean and his manufacturing plant in Belfast, as well as the Falkland Island War, working in perspectives that I, as an American, had never considered.
And McKinty gives us realistic side stories, like Duffy's ongoing love-hate relationship with his neighbors, especially when a black woman moves in down the Street. Duffy says, "Carrickfergus was as ethnically complex and diverse as a joint Ku Klux Klan-Nazi Party rally." And the ongoing tension of an undeclared civil war. When a dead body in a suitcase leads him to the widow of an UDR man, he tells us, "The Ulster Defense Regiment was a locally recruited regiment of the British Army... There were about five thousand UDR men and women in Northern Ireland. The IRA assassinated between fifty and a hundred of them every year."
Besides the brilliant backdrop I also love how McKinty incorporates music into Sean's character. What he listens to tells us as much about his mood as the text. At the start of the novel his sometime girlfriend, Laura is leaving for Edinburgh. Duffy is home feeling sorry for himself and listening to Nick Drake when he decides, "changed my mind. Nick Drake, like heroin or Marmite, was best in small doses."
McKinty also starts to really fill out the rest of the group Duffy works with. I loved that Matty was a Douglas Adams fan!
Altogether a great mystery with terrific pacing and characterization. McKinty keeps turning out multifaceted stories that dont get crazily complex, but do keep me guessing.
And McKinty gives us realistic side stories, like Duffy's ongoing love-hate relationship with his neighbors, especially when a black woman moves in down the Street. Duffy says, "Carrickfergus was as ethnically complex and diverse as a joint Ku Klux Klan-Nazi Party rally." And the ongoing tension of an undeclared civil war. When a dead body in a suitcase leads him to the widow of an UDR man, he tells us, "The Ulster Defense Regiment was a locally recruited regiment of the British Army... There were about five thousand UDR men and women in Northern Ireland. The IRA assassinated between fifty and a hundred of them every year."
Besides the brilliant backdrop I also love how McKinty incorporates music into Sean's character. What he listens to tells us as much about his mood as the text. At the start of the novel his sometime girlfriend, Laura is leaving for Edinburgh. Duffy is home feeling sorry for himself and listening to Nick Drake when he decides, "changed my mind. Nick Drake, like heroin or Marmite, was best in small doses."
McKinty also starts to really fill out the rest of the group Duffy works with. I loved that Matty was a Douglas Adams fan!
Altogether a great mystery with terrific pacing and characterization. McKinty keeps turning out multifaceted stories that dont get crazily complex, but do keep me guessing.