The current Irish economic and real estate boom forms the backdrop for the assured second novel from Irish journalist Kerrigan (after Little Criminals
). Any smalltime hood with an entrepreneurial bent and a workable scam can quickly work himself into the ranks of the millionaires produced by the boom, forcing police departments all over the country to scramble to keep up. In Dublin, Det. Insp. Harry Synnot, a man with an acute sense of morality and justice, is working a rape and a jewelry store robbery, manipulating his snitch, Dixie Peyton, and being groomed for a job in the Serious Crime Department of Europol. Meanwhile in Galway, policeman Joe Mills is investigating a mysterious double murder, probably committed by a man he's just rescued from a rooftop suicide attempt. While much of the fun is in puzzling out unfamiliar words like "gurriers" and "gaff," it's Kerrigan's firm control of the procedural genre and the breathtaking twist he gives his plot that show him to be a master of the form. (Apr.)
