Hang on St. Chrisopher: Adrian McKinty's New Irish Crime Drama

 

 

Hang on Saint Christopher: A Sean Duffy Novel (2025)

By Adrian McKinty

Blackstone publishing, 296 pages.

★★★★

 

Hang on Saint Christopher, with the hammer to the floor

Put a highball on the case, nail across the door...

There's a 750 Norton busting down the door.

 

The new novel from Irish writer Adrain McKinty takes its seemingly odd title from the above lyric from a Tom Waits song. And, yes, 750 Norton motorcycles factor into the mystery. This is another installment in McKinty’s Sean Duffy series, but here's all you need to know to get up to speed. For many people in Northern Ireland the fictional Duffy is a traitor. Not only is he a cop, he’s also a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Sean is a Catholic boy who in the minds of enemies might as well be a Protestant. When in Northern Ireland Duffy maintains a home in Carrickfergus, which is far enough away from the outbursts of violence in Belfast and close to the ferry dock to Cairnryan, Scotland.

 

Duffy is an RUC part timer required to spend just six days a month in Northern Ireland. This will be his life for the next two years for Sean to accumulate enough time to retire and bid adieu to The Troubles. He has built a new life in Scotland with his wife Beth and their daughter Emma. He has no time for the murderous Irish Republican Army (IRA) and is almost as contemptuous of the RUC. To his mind the RUC is filled with screw-ups and careerists, the latter of whom pass the buck when they make a hash of things but grab the glory when something goes right. As if he couldn't be more conspicuous, Duffy drives a flash BMW. His Carrickfergus neighborhood appears to be upscale in the minds of many, though it’s more safe than posh.

 

He and Frank “Crabbie” McCraven are on the same part-time reserve retirement scheme. They generally manage to keep a low profile by doing paperwork; after all, why hand big cases to guys who are six days on and three weeks off? Sean has even groomed his successor, Lawson. As fate would have it, Lawson is on holiday in Spain and Sean and Frank are sucked into investigating the murder of two IRA gunmen. If Duffy had his way, of course, he'd be happy to spit on their graves. But the fragile truce in Northern Ireland doesn't work that way. The two deaths are high-profile cases and the very truce that has reduced violence has made some areas around Belfast even more tense. That’s because not everyone wants peace and even more radical faction of the IRA has arisen. It falls to Sean and Frank to defuse the situation. Or, should I say to Sean? He's a lot like Robert Parker's Spencer with a brogue, a live-wire loner with attitude and filled with wisecracks and disrespect for official/legal procedures. Why play it straight if you can take matters into your own hands?

 

Like Spencer, Duffy tempers violence with big dollops of humor. There is a set up scene in Hang on St. Christopher that will make you chuckle at how Sean deals with troublemakers in his neighborhood. Moral: Don't mess with the Beamer and don't be a bloody fool!

 

If only the two murderers lent themselves to such out-of-the-box solutions. The humor is there, but add bigger dollops of grit, danger, hairy escapes, and bloodshed. This investigation has a bit of everything: carjacking, bugged phones, motorcycles circling like Indians attacking the cavalry, an art forger, and deep looks at the IRA ‘s influence in the United states and beyond. (Cue the CIA!) Even Iceland gets into this drama. Duffy faces the moral dilemma of whether to cut a deal with a known IRA gunman that he despises in order to stop a potentially worse one. Being that it's Ireland, the two creeps are brothers.

 

Duffy is a pain in the arse, but the thing about rule-breakers is that they seldom get hung up on moral qualms if there's a way to keep devils at bay. One of my favorite Duffy traits is that the man is a musical genius. From classical to classic rock by way of punk, folk music, rap, reggae, and beyond you can't stump Duffy in a game of Name that Tune. And maybe you can't stuff stump him at Know Your Art either. Or can you?

 

Rob Weir