Borderlands (Inspector Devlin Series #1) Book

The snow ceased as the assistant state pathologist arrived, black medical bag in hand. I stood by the river as she worked, and watched the sun exploding low over the horizon.

In the tradition of Ian Rankin and Ken Bruen comes a new voice in Irish crime fiction.

Winter 2002. The corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the Borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation. The only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl’s finger and an old photograph, left where she died.

While Devlin searches for the girl’s killer, her father has his own ideas about who is responsible—and his own ideas about how to make them pay. Meanwhile, Devlin becomes reacquainted with an old flame eager to rekindle their affair.

Then another teenager is murdered, and Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance of a prostitute twenty-five years earlier—a case in which he fears one of his own colleagues is implicated. As a thickening snow storm blurs the border between North and South, Devlin finds the distinction between right and wrong, vengeance and justice, and even police officer and criminal becoming equally unclear.

A dazzling and highly lyrical debut crime novel, Borderlands marks the beginning of a compelling new series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin.

Publishers Weekly

When the body of 15-year-old Angela Cashell is found straddling the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in McGilloway's assured debut, Garda inspector Benedict Devlin takes charge of the case because he recognizes the victim as a resident of his part of Ireland. The only clues are a gold ring Angela was wearing but no one in her family can identify and an old photograph Devlin discovers amid the flowers left by mourners. Though Devlin and his team first suspect teenage Whitey McKelvey, a member of an itinerant group known as "travellers," another body soon turns up along with the same photograph, and Devlin realizes that the case runs much deeper. McGilloway skillfully weaves Irish politics-from the shadow of the IRA in the North to the tensions between the travellers and locals in the South-into his multilayered story. A keen observer, Devlin has just enough flaws to make him an empathetic hero. (Sept.)

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