The perspicacious, well read and generally brilliant John O'Connell reviews In The Morning I'll Be Gone in last Friday's Guardian thusly: It's a sad day for fans of Adrian McKinty's smart 1980s-set procedurals featuring mordantly charismatic Belfast cop Sean Duffy. Not because his latest, In the Morning I'll Be Gone (Serpent's Tail, £12.99), is any sort of let-down, but because it concludes what has been a hugely enjoyable trilogy. In some ways, Duffy resembles Iain Banks's young male heroes – crass and impetuous, but also wickedly funny and capable of an intense, redeeming empathy. At first he is on his uppers, having been kicked out of the police force on a trumped-up charge, but he rises to the occasion when MI5 seek his help tracking down an old acquaintance who has become an IRA explosives mastermind. Having solved, in return for information, the "locked room" mystery of a barmaid who apparently fell to her death while changing a lightbulb, Duffy has a ringside seat at one of the 80s biggest terrorist atrocities. Farewell, Duffy – and I share your feelings about Robert Plant's 1983 album The Principle of Moments.
