Quickly read this book in February 2021.
A neighbor recommend this author while having an online discussion of detective novels set in other cities around the world. I had just finished the latest Tana French detective novel set in Ireland and was starting a Cara Black detective novel set in Paris. Our neighbor also recommended a book she just finished about a detective from Quebec working on a murder case in Paris and offered to drop it off at our house when I was ready for another book. I'm reading that novel now.
The novel The Cold Cold Ground is the first of eighteen novels featuring the Belfast Ireland Catholic police detective Sean Duffy and it was amazing. It was set in the Belfast of 1981 during the Troubles, the riots and the hunger strikes as a backdrop. It was very well written and certainly gave the reader a sense of those terrible times of sectarian violence, the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force and British occupation.
I've read a lot over the years about the history of Ireland including the conflicts of Northern Ireland but this book took those issues to a very personal level and a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles. I couldn't put the book down. The plot was complex and intelligent and moved at a quick pace. It also certainly feels like a different time and place and very dangerous too. The detective is a very good character. I'm looking forward to reading more of this series.
I enjoyed the depiction of Belfast and also had Google Maps opened to that city where I was able to look and see the locations mentioned in the book although of course a lot has changed in that city since the 1980's. We were in Ireland in 2019 and had the opportunity to travel to Belfast but we declined. We spent our time in Dublin, London and Edinburgh. I really had no desire to go to Belfast where all that hate and violence has occurred in my lifetime. I don't think those feelings will ever change. Maybe it has something to do with growing up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood during the early years of the Troubles.
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