The Cold Cold Ground is a razor sharp thriller set against the backdrop of a country in chaos, told with style, courage and dark-as-night wit. Adrian McKinty channels Dennis Lehane, David Peace and Joseph Wambaugh to create a brilliant novel with its own unique voice -- Stuart Neville
It's undoubtedly McKinty's finest . . . Written with intelligence, insight and wit, McKinty exposes the cancer of corruption at all levels of society at that time. Sean Duffy is a compelling detective, the evocation of 19802 Northern Ireland is breathtaking and the atmosphere authentically menacing. A brilliant piece of work which does for NI what Peace's Red Riding Quartet did for Yorkshire -- Brian McGilloway
McKinty's prose is a master-class in vicious poise . . . Be in no doubt that this novel is a masterpiece: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground -- Declan Burke
The Cold Cold Ground is a fearless trip into Northern Ireland in the 1980s: riots, hunger strikes, murders - yet Adrian McKinty tells a very personal story of an ordinary cop trying to hunt down a serial killer' -- John McFetridge
McKinty's The Cold Cold Ground has got onto on my five best books of the year list as it is riveting, brilliant and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland -- Ken Bruen
The Cold Cold Ground confirms McKinty as a writer of substance... The names of David Peace and Ellroy are evoked too often in relation to young crime writers, but McKinty shares their method of using the past as a template for the present. The stories and textures may belong to a different period, but the power of technique and intent makes of them the here and now... There's food for thought in McKinty's writing... The Cold Cold Ground is a crime novel, fast-paced, intricate and genre to the core. -- Eoin McNamee * Guardian *
Adrian McKinty is the voice of the new Northern Irish generation but he's not afraid to examine the past. This writer is a legend in the making and The Cold, Cold Ground is the latest proof of this -- Gerard Brennan
Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy could well become a cult figure... McKinty has not lost his touch or his eye for the bizarre and the macabre, or his ear for the Belfast accent and argot. ...McKinty creates a marvellous sense of time and place... he manages to catch the brooding atmosphere of the 1980s and to tell a ripping yarn at the same time... There will be many readers waiting for the next adventure of the dashing and intrepid Sergeant Duffy. -- Maurice Hayes * Irish Independent *
McKinty (has) a razor sharp ear for the local dialogue and a feeling for the bleak time and place that was Ulster in the early Eighties, and pair them with a wry wicked wit... If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written. -- Peter Millar * The Times *
Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of this novel, the first in a projected trilogy of police procedurals. At times The Cold Cold Ground has the feel of James Ellroy, the prose is that focused and intense, but then there are moments of darkest humour, with just a hint of the retro feel of Life On Mars thrown in. The complex plotting and acidic dialogue here are the equal of any crime writer around, and the story rattles along at a breakneck pace, but there is also an earthy eloquence to McKinty's prose that raises it above the level of the average police procedural. -- Doug Johnstone * Herald *
Detective SErgeant Sean Duffy could well become a cult figure... McKinty manages to catch the brooding atmosphere of the 1980s and to tell a ripping yarn at the same time' -- Maurice Hayes * Belfast Telegraph *
The setting represents an extraordinarily tense scenario in itself, but the fact that Duffy is a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant RUC adds yet another fascinating twist to McKinty's neatly crafted plot... a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground. -- Declan Burke * Irish Times *
... an entertaining mix of good police work and desperate action as the young officer careers around Belfast, from one suspect to the next and back again, leaping to wrong conclusions but building his case... The tension makes for outstanding fiction. -- Jeff Glorfield * Melbourne Age/Sydney Morning Herald *
Impressive... has a black humour reminiscent of Jacobean drama -- John Dugdale * Sunday Times *
A cracking read, hugely entertaining and unrelentingly exciting * Sunday Herald Sun, Australia *
Sizzles with ambient dread... Your reviewer was born the year The Cold, Cold Ground is set in, and such passages work better at painting a picture than any episode of Reeling In The Years... It's probably safe to say that Irish crime fiction's current purple patch won't be fading any time soon. * Sunday Independent (Ireland) *
There is enough in McKinty's quirky and surprising style to make further Sean Duffy mysteries a prospect to be relished * Australian Financial Review *
The Cold Cold Ground marks the emergence of an author who has the potential to become a major figure in the crime arena * Canberra Times, Australia *
Witty, intelligent and teeming with broad cultural references and dazzling action set-pieces, this novel leaves you hungry for the next book in the triology * West Australian *
Once again, McKinty proves himself a seriously brilliant novelist, his flair for language matched by his remarkable feel for place, well-known appetite for redemptive violence and seriously cool appreciation of characters who reject conformity. * The Australian *
