Falling Glass focuses on Killian Pavee, a minor character from McKinty's Michael Forsythe trilogy. Killian could be considered a thug for the IRA and reemerges from retiring to score cash for a job saving a wealthy industrialist's children from their neglectful and drug addicted mom.
But of course, things get complicated and Killian realizes he must face a brutal competitor in a Russian hit man, who is involved in what seems to be much more gruesome than a clear kidnapping heist.
Through all this, it is the wit and pragmatism that stay with Pavee and allow him to improvise, though sometimes this gives him trouble, which is no surprise since he was raised with Irish gypsies.
The narrator for this audiobook is Gerard Doyle who has the true Irish brogue to his speech and has also narrated the rest of the Forsythe tales.
Adrian McKinty was born in 1968 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied law, politics and philosophy and moved to the U.S. in the 1990s to Harlem, New York and later to Denver, Colorado. Here he was a high school teacher, and began his journey as a writer. Now he resides in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and two kids. He has written a dozen books, half of which are in two trilogies. His genres are mainly crime, mystery, and young adult fiction. He is most known as an Irish Crime novelist and has been criticized for the excessive violence in his books. Motifs of noir fiction such as revenge and betrayal are used throughout his works, which enables him to uncover the search for meaning in the cold but colorful universe of his characters.
"This novel is a slow burn, hard to get into at first, but then impossible to stop. Killian, the ex-IRA enforcer, Rachel, the junkie ex-wife who's taken off with the kids and a laptop, and the assassin, all on a collision course, and all wrestling with their own demons and choices. By changing point of view with each chapter, McKinty heightens the suspense since we often know more than each of the individual characters. McKinty's style is very well matched in Gerard Doyle's narration. In fact, I cannot imagine the book without Doyle's voice -- his accent, pacing, inflection all made the characters come alive. Learning about tinkers/Pavee/Irish Gypsies was a nice bonus -- I was unaware of this subculture and the differences from the Romani. McKinty gives us a peek inside their world, and veers away from over-romanticizing them just in time. The final confrontation is well done, bringing back Michael Forsythe, the anti-hero from the Dead trilogy (which I was compelled to read immediately after finishing Falling Glass), with a curiously satisfying open-ended conclusion."
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Susan (5 out of 5 stars)