β Scribed by Adrian Mckinty
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Starred Review. McKinty finishes up his knockout trilogy featuring Irish mercenary Michael Forsythe with his most visceral, satisfying effort yet (after 2006's The Dead Yard). Perennial fugitive Forsythe has drifted to Lima, Peru, where he's grabbed by a couple of strong-arm men who force him at gunpoint to take a phone call. Bridget Callaghan, a former lover and the one-time fiancΓ©e of Irish-American mobster Darkey White (whom Forsythe killed), has finally tracked Forsythe down and offers a modest proposal: come to Belfast and find her 11-year-old daughter, Siobhan, who's gone missing, or take a bullet. Our man arrives in Dublin on June 16, when the city is overrun with Joyceans celebrating Bloomsday. Dodging various assassins, Forsythe makes his way up to Belfast. Back on his home turf, he sets out after the girl, apparently kidnapped by a fringe group of IRA paramilitaries. McKinty writes masterful action scenes, and he whips up a frenzy as the bullets begin to fly. Devotees of Irish literature will also appreciate the many allusions to Joyce's Ulysses.
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Starred Review Michael Forsythe is a virtuoso mayhem machine--except when it comes to handling his fatal attraction to Bridget Callaghan, the ex-girlfriend turned New York Irish Mob boss who's been trying to kill him for a decade. Fittingly, then, this final chapter in McKinty's Forsthe trilogy forces Michael to sort out his relationship with the fire-haired Bridget or die trying. After rousting him from a Peruvian hotel security gig in spectacular fashion, Bridget orders Michael to help rescue her adolescent daughter from kidnappers in Ireland. As literary luck would have it, he lands in Dublin on Bloomsday and sets off on a daylong journey to Belfast--although it's more path of destruction than Joycean deconstruction. While this novel outpaces immediate predecessor The Dead Yard (2006), it doesn't quite catch Dead I Well May Be (2003). But McKinty overcomes minor missteps--a key revelation tipped almost from the outset and a less-than-satisfying final scene--with his trademark dark lyricism, one great red herring, and a masterful plot twist that brings Forsythe's character full circle in a lightning flash. And Michael continues to play his insouciant hard-guy role with aplomb. "You know how much damage your skull will do to my gun if I pull this trigger at point-blank range?" he asks one inept crew leader. The answer: "None at all." Raise a glass; young Forsythe will be missed. Frank Sennett
Copyright Β© American Library Association. All rights reserved
A Novel
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