Blood Ties by Brian McGilloway

I followed the debut Ben Devlin thriller Borderlands with Blood Ties, the sixth and final of the series. I found this the better read—the scene already set, the pace smooth and exciting. Eighteen years have passed, but echoes of the first case linger.

The dead man's puncture wounds left an especially vicious trail of blood. This murder was personal and targeted. The population growth of Lifford on the border of North and South Ireland meant strangers no longer stood out, and this transient Airbnb bungalow guest went unnoticed. Inspector Ben Devlin works with Inspector Hendry of the Police Service of Northern Ireland across the border in Strabane to discover the victim calling himself Geoff Dallas or Gerard Dawson was actually Brooklyn Harris, an ex-con recently out of prison for murder. Twelve years ago, he pleaded guilty to the assault and murder of a young girl. No one is going to miss him, but he was not as guilty as he thought. The activist group Northern Justice was harassing him since he was released, entrapping and exposing him as a pedophile online. Not without cause, as he was grooming underage girls in chat rooms online and was intending to meet one when he was killed. The strongest clue to the killer is a strange one: fresh traces of blood found at the scene were not of the victim, but a positive match for the girl he killed twelve years ago.

Taking place over a few days in March 2020, the town is shutting down over COVID. The station has moved to Letterkenny, and Devlin has a new superintendent. At the PSNI office in Strabane, he works with Sergeant Lucy Black, who features in the next series of four novels from McGilloway. Three-quarters of the way through, it was pretty late to be surprised, but I was, as this plot enjoyably twists several times before the satisfying finale.

2021 / Tradeback / 342 pages

My reviews for Brian McGilloway:

Borderlands