Lead Review
- Book: Undertow (Inspector Celcius Daly)
- Location: Ireland, Northern Ireland
- Author: Anthony Quinn
Undertow is a book of our times. It is set along the currently open border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and debates what may replace it (and how it will all work) as Brexit kicks in. Money is to be made or lost depending on what transpires. Investment gambles are being taken.
Smuggling is rife along the border. The IRA gangs of yesteryear have morphed into criminal manipulators of communities and some of those who are supposed to police them. Blind eyes are turned to nefarious practices. The Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda Síochána – the forces of law and order on either side of the border – have little formal contact and little formal cooperation. They do, though, work unofficially together on occasion. A body is washed up on the shore of Lough Neagh in the North. It is quite close to where Inspector Celcius Daly lives. He investigates.
His investigations take him south to the imagined village of Dreesh in the Republic. Dreesh is the base of Tom Morgan, a notorious former IRA commander, now making a living (a very good living) smuggling diesel across the border. It is also the home of Garda Sergeant Peter McKenna. Does Morgan have anything to do with the killing, do we think? And what might McKenna’s role be? And who is Robert Hunter? He is allegedly a Special Branch detective from the North, who seems to have an interest both in Morgan and in Tommy Higgins, an informer at the time of ‘The Troubles’ who has just returned to Dreesh from a period of exile in Andalusia, southern Spain. Daly, though, finds Hunter very hard to trace. All roads lead to a dead end.
The plot is complex. Full of intrigue, and ‘who can you trust’. Daly operates in a shadowy underworld populated by former IRA men, current IRA men, informers, serving Garda officers, serving PSNI officers, Special Branch, and the intelligence services. It is not a straightforward investigation. At the same time he is facing problems in his personal life. His erstwhile boss drowned himself and left a note saying that he had been driven to suicide because of the persecution he suffered from Daly and a journalist. Not true, but an issue for Daly to face.
Undertow is a very well written and very well constructed thriller. The locations – especially Lough Neagh – are lovingly described. You can imagine yourself, as Daly does at the beginning of the book, walking through the dawn mist down to the water’s edge.
Undertow is the fourth Inspector Celcius Daly novel by Anthony Quinn. The others have all been critically acclaimed and nominated for awards. I would not be surprised if Undertow followed in their footsteps. It is a very good, and a very exciting read.
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