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Is The Cold Cold Ground any good? Well, I'm not a terrific judge of my own stuff but here are a few words from people that I admire in the crime fiction family:
COLD COLD GROUND is a beautiful, thrilling heartbreaker of a book, alive with the sorrow and poetry of Ireland. Adrian McKinty is one of the finest writers working in any genre.
---Tim Hallinan
It's undoubtedly McKinty's finest novel: a visceral journey to the heart of darkness that was 1980's Northern Ireland. Written with intelligence, insight and wit, McKinty exposes the cancer of corruption at all levels of society at that time. Sean Duffy is a compelling detective, the evocation of the period is breathtaking and the atmosphere authentically menacing. A brilliant piece of work which does for the North what Peace's Red Riding Quartet did for Yorkshire.
---Brian McGilloway
THE COLD, COLD GROUND is a razor sharp thriller set against the backdrop of a country in chaos, told with style, courage and dark-as-night wit. Adrian McKinty channels Dennis Lehane, David Peace and Joseph Wambaugh to create a brilliant novel with its own unique voice.
---Stuart Neville
The Cold Cold Ground is a fearless trip into the nightmare world of Northern Ireland in the 1980’s: riots, hunger strikes, murders -- a time when every action from the mundane to the extreme is a political statement, yet Adrian McKinty tells a very personal story of an ordinary cop trying to hunt down a killer.
---John McFetridge
Adrian McKinty's The Cold Cold Ground has got to on my five best of the year [list] as it is riveting, brilliant and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland.
---Ken Bruen
Adrian McKinty is the voice of the new Northern Irish generation but he’s not afraid to examine the past. Through Sean Duffy, his latest protagonist, he applies his unique writing skills to our troubled history expertly. This writer is a legend in the making and Cold, Cold Ground is the latest proof of this.
---Gerard Brennan
The sense of what it must have been like to live through the most explosive days of Northern Ireland’s Troubles is vivid but, more than that, convincing. This goes especially for the book's homely details and the off-hand observations by McKinty's Sean Duffy, a Catholic member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. If McKinty were a tour guide, he’d take visitors to parts of Belfast and its surroundings that no one else does. The world’s most exciting crime fiction these days comes from Ireland, the best of that comes from the North, and The Cold Cold Ground may be the best crime novel – and one of the best books, period – out of Northern Ireland.
–-- Peter Rozovsky
