The Midnight Choir in Around the World in 80 Books

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Jan 01, 2019 Tony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: crime, novels, own-loanable, setting-ireland

Written by a veteran journalist, this excellent Irish police procedural hits all the right notes as it follows three cases over the course of a week. At the center of the book is Detective Inspector Synnott, a highly skilled detective who's somewhat of a black sheep among the police force for reasons that aren't immediately revealed. However, the book opens in Galway, as two uniformed plods deal with a man about to jump off a building. After taking him into custody, they see he's covered in drie Written by a veteran journalist, this excellent Irish police procedural hits all the right notes as it follows three cases over the course of a week. At the center of the book is Detective Inspector Synnott, a highly skilled detective who's somewhat of a black sheep among the police force for reasons that aren't immediately revealed. However, the book opens in Galway, as two uniformed plods deal with a man about to jump off a building. After taking him into custody, they see he's covered in dried blood -- but whose blood that is, how it got there, and what this has to do with the rest of the story takes the course of the week to unravel.

Meanwhile, in Dublin, Synnott and his female partner, Detective Cheney, handle a rape case involving the son of a prominent businessman. When a jewelry store is robbed (in a great sequence the reader is privy to from start to end), Synnott concentrates on that, while Cheney heads the rape investigation. This is pretty straightforward procedural stuff, as Cheney digs into the rapist's past for evidence of past misdeeds, and Synnott is sure he knows who pulled the heist, but can't come up with any evidence. A fourth storyline involves Dixie Peyton, a desperate snitch of Synnott's, whose bright future as a young mother and fitness instructor was derailed several years ago by the death of her hoodlum husband.

While the weaving together of these four storylines would be entertaining enough, what makes it truly memorable is how Kerrigan wraps them all in a gray coat of murky morality. The tension between law and justice is an age old one, and has cropped up plenty in crime fiction and film -- but Synnott is one of the most engaging embodiments of that tension I've come across in quite a while. Although he fits the standard fictional police detective template pretty well (middle-aged, divorced, emotionally closed, virtually friendless, poor relationship with his son, lives spartanly in a soulless flat), he's not quite as straightforward as he seems -- which is all one can say without spoiling the story.

There are other twists within the various storylines to keep things lively, including a rather intriguing subplot involving the jeweler. Kerrigan also uses elements of the story to underscore the dramatic socioeconomic changes Ireland has seen in the last two decades. But this is all kept more or less in the background, where it belongs, as the focus remains on Synnott and his attempt to mete out justice. A top-notch crime novel that will have me seeking out Kerrigan's past fiction and keeping an eye out for whatever he does next.
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Jul 30, 2008 Pam marked it as to-read

Shelves: mystery, ireland

07/29/08 rec via pbs

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Around the World in 80 Books