New Policeman Trilogy

2 primary works • 3 total works 3 total works planned

The New Policeman

by Kate Thompson

Published 2 June 2005

Everyone in Kinvara is conscious that time is flying past, faster and faster - to such an extent that when JJ asks his mother what she would like as a birthday present she ask for more time. JJ dismisses this as mere wishful thinking, an impossibility, for who know where the time goes? The Liddys have been musicians for generations and JJ is no exception but what he discovers is that a shadow from the past hangs over their family -did his great-grandfather murder the village priest? When he sets out to buy his mother time, he discovers the fate of a flute which will provide the key to both problems - it is the vital clue. He makes the transition to Tir na n'Og, the land of eternal youth, where the fairy people are also having a problem with time and it falls to his lot to locate the leak between the two parallel worlds. JJ finds where time goes! Music proves to be the touchstone for communication between the fairy and the human domains and the book is saturated with the lure of Irish music for JJ's whole existence is built round the ceili and each chapter relates to a tune, printed out as a heading so that the reader can also become a performer.
As for the New Policeman, Larry O'Dwyer, he is an enigmatic figure who has a significant bearing on the plot but whose identity is kept a superbly guarded secret to the very last surprising moment.

The Last of the High Kings

by Kate Thompson

Published 7 June 2007

JJ has grown-up and has a family of his own: he's married to Aisling and has four children - Hazel, Jenny, Donal and little Aidan. All his children are special in their own way but Jenny has always lived by her own rules. She forgets to go to school a lot, doesn't like wearing shoes and spends a lot of time on the stone beacon on the mountainside, talking to the ghost who guards it and the puca - the big, white goat who is also something else entirely ...The ghost is Jenny's friend. He loves people and the knowledge that he has kept humanity safe by guarding the beacon for thousands of years, makes him proud, even though he knows that people have forgotten about him. But the puca has a plan: he wants Jenny to persuade the ghost that he doesn't need to guard the beacon any more. Because then the pucas will be able to return the world to what it was before humans upset the harmony of things. It looks as though that is what will happen, but old Mikey Cullan, who is also the last of the High Kings of Ireland, has a plan of his own ...And JJ and Aisling have something that they must tell Jenny, something that will explain a lot of things and give Jenny a choice to make - a choice between the world of humans, the only world she has known, or the world of Tir na n'Og, the Land of Eternal Youth.
And it's only after JJ takes Jenny and Donal to Tir na n'Og that she can decide ...

The White Horse Trick

by Kate Thompson

Published 1 October 2009

It is the latter part of the 21st century, and dramatic climate change has made life in Ireland almost impossible. Meanwhile, Tir na n'Og is faced with a refugee problem, and the king of the fairies is not happy about it and when it is revealed that the warlord who is behind the problem is a member of the Liddy family, JJ is sent to sort him out...

Following on from The New Policeman and The Last of the High Kings, The White Horse Trick travels from the now to far distant futures: from world's end to world's beginning..