Borderlands by Brian McGilloway

This police thriller is set on the border between North and South Ireland, covered by both the Irish Republic's An Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The body of fifteen-year-old Angela Cashell is found the week before Christmas, directly on the border, falling to Garda Inspector Ben Devlin to investigate with help from the Northern force. Her naked body wore only panties and an engraved gold ring. Her father, Johnny Cashell, is a local criminal who tells the team where to go, they don't know anything. Cashell is quick to enact violent blame on the Travellers who reside in a local park; namely Whitey McKelvey, a teenage dealer selling tainted drugs, suspected of dating Angela, perhaps the last person she saw. The body of a student from Letterkenny is then found in a burned-out car. The deaths are connected. When her gold ring is traced, it seems the mystery began with corruption within the Garda; it was bought years ago by Devlin's Superintendent for a local prostitute who then disappeared. In the small Donegal border town, history and politics run deep. On both sides of the border are people Devlin went to school with and lives among. His wife and two children are attacked in their home, and when the prime suspect is killed in a cell under police protection, it is clear someone is exacting long-awaited revenge.

This had the unusual setting of Lifford, Derry, Donegal, Letterkenny, and Strabane, but never became confusing. The investigation within the An Garda Síochána poses its own challenges. The characters were intriguing and the plot so complex it is hard to believe this was his debut novel. There are six mysteries in the Inspector Devlin series, and despite reading some middling reviews, I enjoyed it.

(Interesting to find in my copy the original purchase receipt of the previous owner from No Alibis Bookstore, Belfast, whom McGilloway thanks in his acknowledgements.)

2007 / Tradeback / 282 pages