McCusker had it made when he took early retirement from the Ulster Police force with a handsome pay-out. That is, until his wife ran off with their nest egg, forcing him back to work as a rent-a-cop. McCusker is not always inclined to pick up his phone at midnight, especially on evenings spent with his new lover; but when the caller is the police superintendent, and the missing person is not only Belfast’s foremost public intellectual, but the top-cop’s brother-in-law, well…it’s a good thing McCusker leaves the ringer on. This, his second outing, takes him from the historic Botanic Gardens, through the ancient Friar’s Bush Graveyard to the halls of learning at Queens University, where he and DI Lily O’Carroll encounter enough scandal and deceit to rival even the most venal of governments.
“Charles’s skillful depiction of the many sides of love and its strange bypaths lifts this clever novel well above the genre average.”
—Publishers Weekly
Between a tax-evading pot dealer, a pack of dysfunctional academics, a disinherited older brother, charismatic escorts, and a shadowy American, McCusker and O’Carroll have much to parse as they uncover each subject’s truths and motivations. Of course, nobody has a good alibi – and to top it off, McCusker’s estranged wife shows up out of the blue. As McCusker and O’Carroll stumble through a hall of mirrors to build a case, they uncover a criminal empire, and the body count rises.
“A welcome return for Brendy McCusker…. Charles crafts with such a careful eye on the sparks that can fly-some of them charming, some witty, some downright menacing-between characters who don’t happen to see eye to eye, or sometimes even to be operating in the same galaxy. Once again, it’s hard to resist a hero who realizes, ‘He just had a habit of opening his mouth and not knowing what was going to come out.’”
—Kirkus Reviews
2018, 320 pages
ISBN 978-0-8023-1362-1 Hardback $30.00