Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
It s the early 1980s in Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze Prison.
In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Dermot s whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from the inside. Sean knows that if he can crack the locked room mystery, the bigger mystery of Dermot s whereabouts might be revealed to him as a reward.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking down to the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1984, where Mrs. Thatcher is due to give a keynote speech.
As I mentioned back in February, I'd loaded up on audiobooks of Adrian McKinty's outstanding Sean Duffy series to devour on some long park walks during the pandemic. While THE CHAIN has seen McKinty's readership take off to stratospheric levels, belatedly and oh-so-deservedly (long overdue), the Northern Irishman had been writing absolutely top-shelf novels for many, many years before he sat down and wrote that career-saving standalone from a house in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne.
In other circumstances, IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE may have been the final Sean Duffy novel - McKinty has talked about how he originally envisaged his tales of a Catholic detective working for the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Troubles-era Northern Ireland as a trilogy. This title is the third.
(The series then grew to six books - the most recent being POLICE AT THE STATION AND THEY DON'T LOOK FRIENDLY (2017) - and in some great news for McKinty fans long-time and new, there are more Sean Duffy tales on the horizon. A seventh tale has already been published in Germany and is hopefully due for publication in English in the not-too-distant future, after COVID upturned 2020.)
Those readers who've read McKinty's excellent, Edgar Award-winning RAIN DOGS (the fifth Sean Duffy tale) may recall the Northern Irish detective making a comment along the lines of how it was highly unlikely a cop would get two 'locked room' cases in his career, and he'd already had one.
IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE is that earlier 'locked room mystery' for Duffy, though of course in McKinty's masterful hands this is much, much more than a locked room mystery. It's a rich, nuanced novel that hums with the tensions and issues of its times. Duffy is shoulder-tapped by the British secret services to uncover the whereabouts of an IRA bomber who's escaped from prison; a man Duffy knew well in his younger years. One of Duffy's leads may prove helpful, but he needs to solve another case in order to get the information: the death of a young woman in a locked pub.
How could it be anything but a tragic accident? But Duffy needs to find much more if he's to appease the spymasters and convince a grieving and angry mother to 'snitch' on the IRA bomber.
Put simply, IN THE MORNING I'LL BE GONE is wonderful storytelling.
It's rich and layered and beautifully written. Soaked in its setting - time and place and the people living through it. Strong characters, exciting incidents, plenty of tension and intrigue. McKinty doesn't shy away from utilising real figures and events, mixed in with his fictional ones that explore some of the complexities of the Troubles. Listening on audio, McKinty's prose and Gerard Doyle's delivery gave a very atmospheric 'reading' experience. I felt I'd been plucked from the parks of 2020s South London and dropped into mid 1980s Belfast and surrounds (along with a detour to Brighton later on).
A superb novel in a superb series, from a masterful storyteller.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned features writer from New Zealand, now living in London. In recent years he’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at books festivals on three continents. He has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and the McIlvanney Prize, and is founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards and co-founder of Rotorua Noir. His first non-fiction book, SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, was published in 2020. You can heckle him on Twitter.
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