Gripping and atmospheric, Harry’s Game-esque, but the realism is undermined by weird solecisms and a largely unnecessary infodump at the end.
Catholic RUC detective sergeant Duffy thinks he might be on the trail of Northern Ireland’s first unaligned serial killer (several people point out that it’s only the first because psychopaths in Ulster could just join whichever bunch of paramilitaries they preferred and have sectarian cover for all the killing they could desire) - but The Troubles won’t stay out of it. Nobody quite says ‘are you a Catholic serial killer or a Protestant serial killer?’ although it gets close.
It’s palpably in the real world - the Maze hunger strikes, Gerry Adams, Thatcher, pop bands are the background and the plot hinges on one other very real part of The Troubles - but some sloppiness unsuspends disbelief in a story that tries to rely on realism: nobody wore sweatpants in 1981 in the UK, we had tracksuit bottoms or possibly ski pants, skunk didn’t arrive till ten years later, and some bits of dialogue are anachronistic, for example.
The homophobia does ring true, and it’s relevant to the story, not just dropped in for colour. Police top brass snigger about ‘benders’ in the same way that my friends and I used to. We were schoolboys rather than senior RUC officers though, which makes a big difference.
Distracting enough, but slapdash about its world while trying to insist it’s real.