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STONE OF THE HEART, A
by John Brady
Steerforth Press, October 2001
256 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 1586420291


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The first Inspector Matt Minogue novel, a very Irish book, set in Dublin, not too long after Watergate. The inspector is married, with children about whom he worries. He worries too about the subtle and not so subtle politics of the police department when rival gangs, down from the north for a little R & &, get restless.

It's a difficult time in Ireland, and Minogue knows it. He's still recovering from the effects of a bomb aimed at a man he was supposed to protect from such outrages. He worries that his superiors no longer have complete confidence in his abilities. The story is like a lot of Irish tales and tale tellers. It's all right there on the page but in the telling there are the occasional asides, more than a few wanderings down paths that don't go directly to the point.

The novel is infused with Irishness. It is a subtle tale, bringing to the page an astute and wise detective. Almost from the very beginning when Minogue is sent to Trinity College in Dublin to look into what appears to be a random, perhaps casual, death of a student, Minogue senses something a little off kilter. The boy, Jarlath Walsh, is an innocent, young, idealist, though there are those who insist he's just another drug pusher. Minogue is not put off. With tenacity he follows through, even when things come crashing down and his immediate superior begins to doubt him.

A Stone of the Heart is not an easy read. It reveals much of the ambivalence and the difficult attitudes of the warring parties in the contest for peace in Northern Ireland and it raises questions regarding the pain and suffering that attend the innocent as well as the guilty. And in fresh ways we come to know a man who is a good cop and who struggles to be a good family man as well.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, March 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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