num_pages: 345
description: A police widow’sthirst for revenge lives on decades after his death.  Dublin 1983  Garda Declan Kelly is working his last off-duty shift outside of a nightclub when he witnesses a double murder in an alleyway. Spared a bullet in the back of the head, Kelly is snared instead by the crime family involved in the murders. They soon force him into an impossible position, and he kills himself. His note to his pregnant wife brings her not just grief but an overpowering rage, and the desire for revenge on all who let her husband down – including the police themselves. Before his suicide, Kelly had asked for help and advice from his Sergeant. The reply was a cold demand to turn himself in, as a criminal.   Dublin 2005  An uneasy Inspector Minogue sits in on an interview with a jittery addict, all arranged by his friend Tommy (‘Molly’) Malone of the Drug Squad. Minogue is wary. He wonders if a rumour that Malone has ‘lost it’ may be true. Malone is bitter, and vulnerable, after the drug overdose death of his own brother last year. There have been incidents of Malone roughing up suspects. Is Malone himself being played by these powerful crime families? As Minogue probes the Condon file, he discovers that a woman whom Condon briefly lived with, a Moldovan, cannot be found. There are rumblings of a territorial war brewing between the Irish crime families and their acolytes, and gangsters from Easter Europe flocking to Ireland. Trawling the pubs and clubs in the Dublin area, they come in contact with a prostitution racket run by an affable, accented ‘George.’ The same ‘George’ is not helpful, and flees. Malone wants him badly and the teeming lanes and streets of central Dublin witness a chase and a violent confrontation. A very oblique follow-up Minogue hears is a mention of a ‘cop who topped himself years ago.’ Minogue must now follow up on this information. The story closes on betrayal and fury, and a detective who can only find rest in a remote windswept field facing the Atlantic.
language: English
title: Islandbridge
titlecomplete: Islandbridge (Inspector Matt Minogue #8)
genres: Mystery, Ireland
ratings_count: 24
series: Inspector Matt Minogue
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Hammett Prize
publisher: johnbradysbooks.com