The new year started with a police mystery set in Ireland featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin. Devlin is a police official working the location which is the borderlands between North and South Ireland.
Writer Brian McGilloway's second book of the Devlin series, Gallows Lane was the month's selection. His picture (as shown in the back of the book) is to the right.
The beating death of a young woman after a visit to a night club is the new assignment for Devlin and his partner, Caroline Williams, but he was also previously asked by his supervisor to keep tabs on a newly-released convict, James Kerr. But Kerr gives Devlin the slip and is later found viciously murdered.
In the meanwhile, Devlin's attention is directed to inter-department affairs with important promotion opportunities and coping with fellow police and their prickly personalities. That has some ramification beyond the job as DI Devlin does have a young family to consider.
Some observations included the following:
- the book stays focused on a telling a straightforward crime story--it doesn't include any humor or much about description about Ireland (a couple of suggestions)
- the novel's atmospheric nature is mainly only in reference to weather on occasion but slang and Irish expressions pop up regularly in the dialogue
- the book includes a surprise in the end with its promotion storyline
- the practice of smoking is carried on frequently (much more so than the U.S.) and that was a little surprise [I added the author says in an interview that he used to be a smoker]
- those who read McGilloway's first book Borderlands preferred it to Gallows Lane.
