The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

Young and well-educated, Officer Sean Duffy works among mature provincial colleagues for the Carrickfergus police in Northern Ireland. It's 1981, and Belfast is burning. The lone "Catholic" in a station of "Proddies" (though the cops are not religious), Sean observes the false categories and black and white thinking as his station is challenged with a rash of apparent anti-gay killings and a seeming suicide.

The funeral of Bobby Sands is over. With other hunger strikers dying in the Maze, an obdurate Thatcher cuts short a Belfast visit, reiterating her refusal to "negotiate with terrorists." Meanwhile, strict social divisions are enforced by threats and violence: Catholic or Protestant, Orange or Green, from here or from "over the water." Like Anna Burns in Milkman, McKinty uses such chillingly simple phrases to telegraph extreme social tensions.

Sean Duffy wants only to solve certain crimes and prove himself. He senses the first three deaths are connected -- to each other and to the political situation. True, homosexuality is illegal, and gays are pariahs, but he reasons ironically that Northern Ireland "doesn't do hate crimes." Anyone who wants to kill, he tells his colleagues, just joins one of the paramilitary organizations.

Along with the two murdered gay men, a young woman was found hanged, an apparent suicide. But the pathology report is ambiguous, and also reveals that she recently gave birth. She's the divorced ex of a long-jailed IRA operative. For Sean, her death smacks of political revenge rather than the standard Irish trope of guilt and depression caused by having an "illegitimate" baby.

In this tale of twists and turns, the first of the Troubles Trilogy, the author portrays his setting with an unerring voice. As well as capturing a unique time and place, this novel raises universal social questions along with tension-building story questions. Fortunately, the fascinating but deeply flawed Sean Duffy returns in future works, where the reader can see what he's learned from his first foray into Carrickfergus policing.

I found this novel far more convincing and thought-provoking than Adrian McKinty's more recent work, The Chain. I look forward to reading the sequels to follow Sean's development as a character trying to survive in a bizarrely challenging place and moment in history.