Sean Duffy

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman's suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things-and people-aren't always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It's no easy job-especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. Add to this the fact that, as a Catholic policeman, it doesn't matter which side he's on, because nobody trusts him, and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation. Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles-and of a cop treading a thin, thin line.

A torso in a suitcase looks like an impossible case, but Sean Duffy isn't easily deterred, especially when his floundering love life leaves him in need of a distraction. So with Detective Constables McCrabban and McBride, he goes to work identifying the victim. The torso turns out to be all that's left of an American tourist who once served in the US military. What was he doing in Northern Ireland in the midst of the 1982 Troubles? The trail leads to the doorstep of a beautiful, flame-haired, twentysomething widow, whose husband died at the hands of an IRA assassination team just a few months before. Suddenly Duffy is caught between his romantic instincts, gross professional misconduct, and powerful men he should know better than to mess with. These include British intelligence, the FBI, and local paramilitary death squads-enough to keep even the savviest detective busy. Duffy's growing sense of self-doubt isn't helping. But as a legendarily stubborn man, he doesn't let that stop him from pursuing the case to its explosive conclusion.

A Catholic cop tracks an IRA master bomber amidst the sectarian violence of the conflict in Northern Ireland 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.

Belfast, 1985. Amid the Troubles, Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggles with burnout as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point-blank and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances. He soon discovers that Kelly was present at a decadent Oxford party where a cabinet minister's daughter died of a heroin overdose, which may or may not have something to do with Kelly's subsequent death. New evidence leads elsewhere: gun runners, arms dealers, the British government, and a rogue American agent with a fake identity. Duffy thinks he's getting somewhere when agents from MI5 show up at his doorstep and try to recruit him, thus taking him off the investigation. Duffy is in it up to his neck, doggedly pursuing a case that may finally prove his undoing. 1. A Scanner Darkly 2. A Problem with Mr. Dwyer 3. Murder Was the Case That They Gave Me 4. The New Blood 5. A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again 6. Tide Burial 7. The Girl in Interview Room One 8. Police Station Blues 9. Contact High 10. The Offer 11. The Suicides Are Piling Up 12. Over the Water 13. Gun Street Girl 14. Even the Wasps Cannot Find My Eyes 15. Gottfried Habsburg 16. The Third Man 17. Interrogating Deirdre Ferris 18. Nigel Vardon 19. Special Branch Make a Scene 20. Is That All There Is to a Fire? 21. The Quiet American 22. Davenport Blues 23. Stasis 24. The Mysterious Mr. Connolly 25. Convincing Nigel Vardon 26. The Confidential Telephone 27. Our Business Now Is North 28. Blue Tigers 29. Flow My Tears the Policeman SaidEpilogue: A Year and a Half LaterAfterword.

Rain Dogs, a stunning installment in the Sean Duffy thriller series, following the Edgar Award-nominated Gun Street Girl, is "another standout in a superior series" (Booklist). It's just the same things over and again for Sean Duffy: riot duty, heartbreak, cases he can solve but never get to court. But what detective gets two locked-room mysteries in one career? When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus Castle, it looks like a suicide. Yet there are a few things that bother Duffy just enough to keep the case file open, which is how he finds out that Bigelow was working on a devastating investigation of corruption and abuse at the highest levels of power in the UK and beyond. And so Duffy has two impossible problems on his desk: Who killed Lily Bigelow? And what were they trying to hide?

Another thrilling mystery featuring Detective Sean Duffy and his most dangerous investigation yet Belfast, 1988. A man is found dead, killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. This is no hunting accident. But uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on a high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave. Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs, and with his relationship on the rocks, Duffy will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece. Prologue: You Can't Trust a Special Like the Old-Time Coppers1. No Hay Banda2. Just Another Dead Drug Dealer3. The Big Sheep4. A Pretty Shitty Morning On the Ballypollard Road5. Inspector Dalziel6. Mr. Deauville's Interesting Past7. The Bulgarians and the Bel Tel8. Ivan Morrison9. DAADD Knows Best10. Death On the Rock11. The Lady Vanishes12. The Angry Father13. The Paper, the Scissors, and Michael Stone14. A Taste of Honey15. That Petrol Emotion16. Out Here In the Woods17. The Old Files18. Infernal Affairs19. Lifted20. Out of the Silent Planet21. Aftermath22. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?23. The ACC24. Driving Music25. The Offer26. The Factory27. Running for the Border28. Detective Sergeant John Crabbie McCrabban29. The Chief Constable30. O Masterful Bleak Cop31. Silencio "Gerard Doyle has become the voice of the Duffy books...Listeners should not be surprised that his Irish and British accents are perfect but he is also excellent with the French. There are some pretty gruesome scenes here but the story is gripping and... new listeners will want to seek out the earlier audios."

Slamming the door on the hellscape of 1980s Belfast, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy hopes that the 1990s are going to be better for him and the people of Northern Ireland. As a Catholic cop in the mainly Protestant RUC he still has a target on his back, and with a steady girlfriend and a child the stakes couldn't be higher. After handling a mercurial triple agent and surviving the riots and bombings and assassination attempts, all Duffy wants to do now is live. But in his final days in charge of Carrickfergus CID, a missing persons report captures his attention. A fifteen-year-old traveler girl has disappeared and no one seems to give a damn about it. Duffy begins to dig and uncovers a disturbing underground of men who seem to know her very well. The deeper he digs the more sinister it all gets. Is finding out the truth worth it if DI Duffy is going to get himself and his colleagues killed? Can he survive one last case before getting himself and his family out over the water?

New York Times bestselling author Adrian McKinty continues the Edgar Award–winning Sean Duffy series with Hang on St. Christopher. Rain slicked streets, riots, murder, chaos. It's July 1992 and the Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after twenty-five apocalyptic years. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy got his family safely over the water to Scotland, to "Shortbread Land". Duffy's a part-timer now, only returning to Belfast six days a month to get his pension. It's an easy gig, if he can keep his head down. But then a murder case falls into his lap while his protege is on holiday in Spain. A carjacking gone wrong and the death of a solitary, middle-aged painter. But something's not right, and as Duffy probes he discovers the painter was an IRA assassin. So, the question becomes: Who hit the hitman and why? This is Duffy's most violent and dangerous case yet and the whole future of the burgeoning "peace process" may depend upon it. Based on true events, Duffy must unentangle parallel operations by the CIA, MI5 and Special Branch. Duffy attempts to bring a killer to justice while trying to keep himself and his team alive as everything unravels around them. They might not all make it out of this one. "{The Cold Cold Ground} is the best crime novel mystery that I've read in a long time…{McKinty is} a great writer." "McKinty's Sean Duffy, policing the mean streets of 1985 Northern Ireland, tackles gun runners, arms dealers, MI5, and a mysterious double murder-or is it a triple?-in the fourth installment of this terrific series." "McKinty continues to astound me…{His} novels are, in my mind, already elevated to canonical status…McKinty takes the time-tested conventions of the mystery genre and builds a narrative utterly unique and compelling over them…In short, McKinty has learned from the masters, and in my opinion, now is one." "Mixes a mordant wit and casual, unpredictable violence that vividly portrays a turbulent time…McKinty is in full command of language, plot, and setting in a terrifying period of history that sometimes seems forgotten."