Book Log 2020 #51: The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan

Early in his career in the Garda, the Irish national police, Cormac Reilly answers a call at a decrepit house, where he discovers two children whose mother is dead upstairs. He calls in for assistance, and files the case away.

Twenty years later, Reilly has returned to Galway, where he has to re-establish himself with the local Garda bosses after years working in Dublin. When he's given an apparent suicide to investigate, it turns out the death has a connection to those children from that early case. And it looks like it was no suicide.

This is kind of a bumper time for crime fiction set in Ireland, between Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad and Adrian McKinty's series with Northern Irish detective Sean Duffy. I don't think this book is quite up there with either of those, but it's a solid first outing that will likely see me pick up the second one. Eventually.

 Book Log 2020 #50: The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

With the Flow, the pathways that allowed the planets of the Interdependency to stay connected, continuing to dissipate, Emperor Grayland II has to figure out how to best save the billions of people who will become effectively cut off from other humans once it finally disappears. She has to do this while fending off threats to her crown (and her life) from powerful noble families who want to squeeze every last dollar out of the interstellar trade the Flow allows.

This is a fitting end to the trilogy, though I would have liked to spend more time in this universe. After getting another Lock In universe novel, though. 

 Book Log 2020 #49: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

A university researcher, nearing the end of her career, gets a call from a former student. Some documents were found during renovations to his home, and he thinks they fall into her area of expertise. She goes to see them, and instantly realizes their importance. Needing help to research the documents, she enlists a graduate student in her hunt to figure out who is Aleph, the name adopted by their scribe.

While this is playing out, we are also brought into a 17th century timeline, where we meet the scribe and learn how they got the job, and how entering the world of letters and intellectual pursuits changes the scribe's life. 

I liked the way the two story lines played off against each other, and the juxtaposition of the scribe (who is entering a world of knowledge) and the researcher (who is leaving it). Probably a little long, but a good read nevertheless.

 Book Log 2020 #48: The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

Sean Duffy is a man of some contradictions. He attended university, but left to become a cop.  He's a Catholic serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulatory, which is almost uniformly staffed by Protestants. He's pledged to uphold the law, but enjoys the occasional illegal substance. He's a good cop, but often finds himself battling these contradictions, in both his work and personal lives.

Making this no easier is that it's the early 1980s, and the Troubles are still raging in Northern Ireland. He's a target for the IRA as a cop, and for loyalist paramilitaries as a Catholic working and living in largely Protestant spaces. Hardly a page goes by where he's not looking under his car for a bomb.

It's in this difficult, stressful environment that Duffy has to investigate what appears to be a publicity killing - probably of a informer or other collaborator - and a suicide in some local woods. There's nothing obviously linking the killings, but as Duffy picks up on inconsistencies in each case, he starts to see there's something larger at work.

This is the first in a series, and I can only hope future books are as good as this one. It's sharply written, and full of detail that comes from McKinty's years as a crime reporter. Duffy has all of the bluff and bluster of literary detectives like John Rebus, but has a very different set of personal vulnerabilities that round his character out more fully. Looking forward to see where this series goes.

 Book Log 2020 #47: The Siberian Dilemma by Martin Cruz Smith

Russian police detective Arkady Renko is worried about his semi-official girlfriend, journalist Tatiana Petrovna, who does not get off the train that was supposed to bring her back from a month in Siberia, where she was investigating an oligarch with plans to run for president. There's enough danger in the story - crossing an oligarch has consequences - that Renko wants to go and find her.

Luckily (?) for him, an official reason crops up for him to make the trip. Renko's superior sends him to Siberia to check on the oligarch himself, a case motivated more by politics than the law. He also has to interrogate a Chechen prisoner, with an eye towards making sure the questioning leads to the prisoner's conviction. 

Renko handles these cases, and the search for Tatiana, with his usual mix of humor, fatalism, and skill at working the system. It's been interesting to see Renko adapt his experiences as a cop in the Soviet Union to the reality of Putin's Russia, which seems much more dangerous.