The Rule Book is an intricately plotted police procedural set in and around Dublin, in the atmosphere of impending social and political failure that eventually led to the Celtic Tiger having its head unceremoniously expelled from its ass by the 2008 banking crisis.

The book was published in 2009, but Kitchin's 'Acknowledgements' on the final page are dated August 2008. Thus, he was probably writing the story in 2007 and the beginning of 2008. The novel shows how contemporary crime fic More...

At a Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in the mountains outside Dublin a young woman has been killed: affixed to a bed via a sword threading through her mouth and neck. Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy is put in charge of the case which soon turns from a routine murder investigation into something far more sinister. The girl’s killer, who calls himself The Raven, has left calling cards and the first chapter of a book about how to commit the perfect series of murders. If he is to be believe More...

Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy is called to the scene of murder where the body of a young woman has been found in a way suggesting that she passively accepted her death. The case gets even stranger when a document is found at the scene written as the first chapter in a self-help guide for serial killers. Soon after, a search of the area locates six carefully placed business cards advertising The Rule Book with a picture of a raven. Does this mean six more victims?

As bodies of the More...

Author of academic texts such as The Cognition of Geographic Space, Maynooth-based Rob Kitchin demonstrates with The Rule Book that can also write fiction convincingly. His debut novel opens with the discovery of a woman's body at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, murdered by a sword in what appears to be a bizarre sacrifice. Nearby is a typed note, headed "The Rules: Chapter One M: Choosing a victim R" and business cards which read "The Rule Book: A Self-Help Guid More...

This is a police procedural which focuses mainly in the daily work of the crime investigators, their internal quarrels, their difficult relationship with the media, the political implications of the case, the personal history of the main character topped up with a few references to Ireland and its history which I found very interesting. It has some great secondary characters like the state pathologist Professor Elaine Jone and a Scottish profiler Kathy Jacobs. And both, Charlie Deegan an ambitio More...

Plot was engaging, but the writing lacked something. It was simple and repetitive - I can't count how many times protagonist Colm McEvoy "placed his plastic cigarette between his lips." Also, I think it's creepy and unrealistic when children in fiction act too much like adults, and Colm's daughter Gemma practically becomes her recently deceased mother in miniature. I also wish the end had been either a bit more definitive or deliberately open-ended; as it was, it felt like the novel en More...