Ben Devlin
5 total works
When a controversial US diplomat is attacked during the opening of a Donegal gold mine, Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin is disciplined for the lapse in security. The gunman turns out to be a young environmentalist – related to an old friend of Devlin’s. Within days, the killing of an illegal immigrant near the Irish border leads Devlin to a vicious people-smuggling ring. Then Bradley himself is found dead near the mine and Devlin begins to suspect that the business is a front for something far more sinister than mere mining.
Bleed a River Deep is the new novel from one of the most acclaimed young crime-writers around, a labyrinthine tale of big business, the new Europe, and the dispossessed. World politics, industry and organised crime collide in McGilloway’s most accomplished, most gripping, and most powerful novel yet.
When Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin is summoned to a burning barn, he finds inside the charred remains of a man who is quickly identified as a local drug dealer, Martin Kielty. It soon becomes clear that Kielty’s death was no accident, and suspicion falls on a local vigilante group. Former paramilitaries, the men call themselves The Rising.
Meanwhile, a former colleague’s teenage son has gone missing during a seaside camping trip. Devlin is relieved when the boy’s mother, Caroline Williams, receives a text message from her son’s phone, and so when a body is reported, washed up on a nearby beach, the inspector is baffled.
When another drug dealer is killed, Devlin realises that the spate of deaths is more complex than mere vigilantism. But just as it seems he is close to understanding the case, a personal crisis will strike at the heart of Ben’s own family, and he will be forced to confront the compromises his career has forced upon him.
With his fourth novel, McGilloway announces himself as one of the most exciting crime novelists around: gripping, heartbreaking and always surprising, The Rising is a tour de force – McGilloway’s most personal novel so far.
'Brian McGilloway's command of plot and assurance of language make it difficult to believe that Borderlands is his debut.' - The Times
'A mystery of labyrinthine complexity' - Sunday Telegraph
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.
Then another teenager is murdered, and things become further complicated when Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance of a prostitute twenty-five years earlier - a case in which he believes 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 lyrical debut crime novel, Borderlands marks the beginning of a compelling new series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin.
