Alongside Ken Bruen and Stuart Neville, McKinty sits atop the Irish contemporary crime writing scene, so this comes as a pleasant surprise: a quirky historical mystery, based on a true life case, set in 1906 on a remote South Pacific island. Will Prior, previously a military foot policeman in the Boer War, is there in self-imposed exile when a German local government representative asks for his assistance to investigate a case on a nearby island populated by a group of European back to nature eccentrics one of whom has died in mysterious circumstances. Prior and a 'lady traveller' foisted on him, reluctantly travel there. Resolutely old-fashioned storytelling with an edge that will delight no end. ~
It is 1906 and Will Prior is in self-imposed exile on a remote South Pacific island, working a small, and failing, plantation. He should never have told anyone about his previous existence as a military foot policeman in the Boer War, but a man needs friends, even if they are as stuffy and, well, German, as Hauptmann Kessler, the local government representative. So it is that Kessler approaches Will one hot afternoon, with a request for his help with a problem on a neighbouring island, inhabited by a reclusive, cultish group of European 'cocovores', who believe that sun worship and eating only coconuts will bring them eternal life. Unfortunately, one of their number has died in suspicious circumstances, and Kessler has been tasked with uncovering the real reason for his demise. So along with a 'lady traveller', Bessie Pullen-Burry, who is foisted on them by the archipelago's eccentric owner, they travel to the island of Kabakon, to find out what is really going on.
A seriously brilliant novelist Australian McKinty gets better and better - The Times
Author
About Adrian McKinty
Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Northern Ireland. He studied law, politics and philosophy at university. He moved to New York City in the early nineties where he worked in bars, bookstores and building sites. He now lives in Melbourne, Australia and writes a popular blog on film, music, politics and literature at adrianmckinty.blogspot.com and tweets @adrianmckinty.
McKinty is best known for his series of Sean Duffy thrillers. The first, The Cold Cold Ground, was published in 2012 and won the 2013 Spinetingler Award and its sequel I Hear The Sirens In The Street has been shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Awards 2013, 2014 Le Prix SNCF du Polar, the Barry Awards 2014 and longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2014.
Maxim Jakubowski's view on Adrian McKinty...
The stylish Irish author who now lives in Australia but was for many years in America has followed his DEAD trilogy with FIFTY GRAND, a powerful revenge novel set in Cuba and Colorado, with a female Havana cop on the rampage in a mission to avenge her dead father. Staccato prose, poetic landscapes and an unforgettable heroine all conspire to make this one of the big crime novels of the past year. A must.
