Hang on St. Christopher by Adrain McKinty

Published by Blackstone on March 4, 2025

The eighth entry in Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series takes place in 1992. Duffy has the rank of Detective Inspector in Northern Ireland, but his checkered record (lots of crimes solved but few convictions because Duffy cares more about solving problems than personal glory) caused him to join the police reserve as a prelude to retirement. He lives in Scotland with his wife and daughter but takes a ferry to his native country for the six days of work per month that he needs to maintain eligibility for a full pension.

When Duffy worked full time, he was a case officer who ran an IRA double agent. Now he shares a desk in Carrickfergus with his former partner, Detective Sergeant McCrabban, another reserve officer. Neither detective is assigned to serious cases. That changes when a homicide occurs in Carrickfergus. The head of the criminal investigation department is on vacation so Duffy and McCrabban catch the case. Duffy grumbles about having to work a few extra days (McCrabban welcomes the overtime), but he’s secretly thrilled to be doing meaningful work again.

The murder victim seems to have been killed during a carjacking, but Duffy believes the death is more consistent with an execution. Duffy’s first task is identifying the victim. A search of his house reveals a couple of original Picasso etchings, but they may have been purchased under a fictitious name. The story builds interest as Duffy trudges from clue to clue, apparently chasing a ghost, before he uncovers the victim’s true identity — and his true occupation. It is a disturbing but credible reveal.

The novel’s title comes from a suitably dark Tom Waits song of the same name. The lyrics mention a Norton motorcycle. An assassin riding a Norton is tied to the murder in Carrickfergus and then to a second. When Duffy seems to be getting close to identifying the assassin, he becomes a target.

Hang on St. Christopher blends the traditional crime-solving of a police procedural with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The politics of the IRA provide an interesting background that moves to the forefront when internal differences in the IRA power structure suggest a motive for the murders.

When Duffy ventures into the Republic of Ireland to talk to an IRA leader, tension grows. The novel’s best action scene involves a shootout between IRA assassins and cops on the Republic’s side of the border. McKinty deserves credit for describing a credible clash without elevating the aging Duffy to the status of superhero.

Duffy’s characterization is familiar — apart from resisting the sedate joys of retirement, Duffy drinks quite a bit, thinks about cheating on his wife, and ignores orders that he regards as inconsistent with crime solving — but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you’ve got one that rolls. Duffy stands apart from other disgruntled cops in his ability to quote classic literature, identify all sorts of music, and discuss the details of history. He’s not afraid to admit that he’s afraid of death, now that he has a daughter who gives him a reason to live. That doesn’t stop him from exercising questionable judgment when he charges toward danger.

Fictional cops on the other side of the Atlantic (at least those in Great Britain and Ireland) tend not to be as insufferably self-righteous as their American counterparts. Hang on St. Christopher is an excellent choice for police procedural fans who would enjoy spending time with a snarky Irish cop working in a difficult time.

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Tongues volume 1 by Anders Nilsen

Published by ‎ Pantheon on March 11, 2025

I have to hand it to Anders Nilsen. He does not lack ambition. Not only does he take on a big story, merging Greek mythology with modern strife in the Middle East, he invents a new mythology of his own, one that sends a thirteen-year-old girl named Astrid on a mission that will either save the world or cause it to follow her into darkness.

Astrid acquired a suitcase but has not investigated its contents. A talking chicken tells her it might be used as a weapon but she will lack the knowledge to wield it. The chicken (which sometimes manifests as a less loquacious owl) tells her that her treasure is of immense importance to the human race.

The story is anchored in the myth of Prometheus, who spends each day chained to a mountain where he plays blind chess with the eagle who will eat his liver before the day ends. In some panels, the eagle is in flight, apparently communicating with Prometheus by telepathy, while the art focuses on urban marketplaces, streets filled with armored vehicles, soldiers mingling with vendors and shoppers, and pigeons perched on roofs next to buildings that have collapsed. Prometheus and the eagle chat about various subjects, but Prometheus has recently been obsessed with his unexplained plan to regain his freedom.

In another plot thread, a European soldier who calls himself I.O. is fighting or smuggling goods in a place he calls East Bum-fuckistan. I.O. and fellow soldier Nico come across and share their beer with a hitchhiking American. The American is trying to lose himself after killing some family members under circumstances he does not reveal. A teddy bear strapped to his backpack gives him advice that helps him survive. I.O. has made a promise to a dying friend that he will safeguard the friend’s monkey, but Nico — who is supposed to be helping I.O. with a side hustle — makes off with the American and the monkey.

And then there’s the swan who transforms each night into a red-eyed human male and appears in the bed of a young woman who is being pressured to choose a husband from an unappealing group of suitors. Some of this might seem silly, yet it all fits within the context of a modernized myth, given the prevalence of talking animals in Greek mythology.

The storylines will apparently be tied together at some point by the Omega, whose followers (“the Rings”) believe he is the Roman god Jupiter. The Omega long ago prevailed in a war against the maker, the progenitor of the gods. More than that we don’t yet know.

The plot is intelligent and the story is occasionally moving. By the end of the first volume, we see the contents of Astrid’s suitcase, which raises more questions than it answers. We also see inside a tower that seems to be protected by radar and a military presence, a tower occupied by a tormenter of Prometheus. I would be worried that such an ambitious beginning to a story might get lost without reaching a destination, but the story is told with confidence, suggesting that Nilsen has a plan that will eventually cause the storylines to cohere.

I’m not an art critic, but I was taken by the minimalist nature of the graphic art. Many panels tell the story in images rather than text, as good graphic novels should. Volume 1 of Tongues left me intrigued. I look forward to volumes to come.

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The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton

Published by ‎ St. Martin's Press on February 25, 2025

‎I’m not sure if this was Edward Ashton’s intent — he may have intended only to entertain by crafting a science fiction thriller — but I view The Fourth Consort as an exploration of culture and the difficulty of understanding or adopting cultural norms that differ from our own. Like Mickey7, the novel is also about diplomacy and moral behavior as an alternative to fighting needless battles.

Ashton’s books tend to be uncomplicated stories that don’t require the support of a large cast of characters. In The Fourth Consort, two primary species are in interstellar conflict with each other. Both species are roaming around in our part of the universe in search of new species that might benefit from their guidance. One is called Unity; their leaders belong to a race of creatures with hard shells whose members are known as ammies. The other group is called the Assembly. Members of the race that dominates the Assembly are described as stickmen. The aliens are unimaginative, but that's a small knock on the story.

Unity visited Earth and made a lot of promises about forming an alliance that don’t seem to have been kept. Dalton Greaves is a human. Dissatisfied with his life, Dalton took a job with Unity in exchange for the promise of a vast fortune when he returns to Earth. Dalton’s job is to make first contact with aliens and act as a diplomat for Unity. He’s on a survey ship captained by an ammie named Boreau, who is probably more interested in taking a planet’s resources than in diplomacy.

The planet is populated by minarchs. Minarchs fight with their mandibles, supplemented by spears. Two political factions are struggling to control the planet. The city is ruled by something like a queen, but she is being challenged by members of the competing faction.

Dalton and another human, Neera Agarwal, take a lander to a planet, only to find that a stickman named Breaker has already made contact with the minarchs. The Assembly and Unity ships in orbit manage to destroy each other, leaving Dalton, Neera, and Breaker stranded on the planet. They nevertheless continue their diplomatic missions, a task Breaker pursues by trashing Dalton as a sneaky human who can't be trusted.

The story follows Dalton as he develops relationships with the minarch queen, her Counselor, the Prefect who wants to displace the queen, and Breaker. Dalton earns the minarchs’ respect (or triggers their fear) when he uses his bare hands to defeat a fearsome creature that attacks him in his room. Fortunately, the creature’s venom doesn’t kill humans, making Dalton seem more powerful to the minarchs than he actually is.

The queen takes a liking to Dalton and decides he will be her new consort. To his relief, Dalton won’t be required to have sex with the queen. He is nevertheless unhappy to learn that the queen ate her first consort. The second and third are marking time until they are devoured. Dalton is the fourth.

As events unfold, Dalton makes an enemy of the Prefect, whose lover is killed by the Counselor as she tries to protect Dalton. This leads to Dalton’s designation as the second in a duel between the Prefect and the Counselor. Minarchs tell him that honor compels him to fight his own duel with the Prefect. The duels are dictated by cultural norms that Dalton doesn’t share. Some people go all shivery at the mention of the word honor, but the novel suggests that dishonorable (or just stupid) behavior often results from cultural adherence to notions of honor that serve no purpose. The honor killings of female relatives after they are raped are a human example of abhorrent acts taken in the name of honor.

Novels often benefit from a protagonist who is forced to make a difficult moral choice. Dalton has to decide whether to let Neera rescue him with superior firepower. If he goes with her, his actions as a consort will reflect poorly upon the queen and will probably lead to her death. If he stays and battles the Prefect, his choice will probably cause his own death. If Dalton substitutes his own sense of honor for the views of the minarchs, what choice will he make?

Ashton always tells a good story. The novel moves quickly. It has enough action scenes to give it the feel of a science fiction thriller, but it also has some hidden depth. The characters have well-defined personalities. Ashton is a likeable guy who messed up his life and is trying to atone, or possibly to disappear. Either way, he remains true to himself, even when he must decide whether to make unselfish choices. The blend of action and philosophy has always drawn me to science fiction, and Ashton is following the best traditions of the genre.

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Galway's Edge by Ken Bruen

Published by Mysterious Press on March 4, 2025

Jack Taylor’s life is not quite as miserable in Galway’s Edge as it often seems to be. He takes a few beatings but his dog is left alone. He interacts with nuns but none of them are murdered. Two women break up with Taylor but he doesn’t have to kill either of them. Series fans will understand that any day without the death of a dog or nun or girlfriend counts as a good day for Taylor.

Taylor takes on his usual causes in Galway’s Edge. A vigilante group called Edge that has assisted Taylor in the past is now headed by five people, including a priest. Father Richard, special envoy to the Archdiocese of Galway, Tuam, and Athenry, asks Taylor to find the vigilante priest “and dissuade him of his activities.”

Father Richard thinks “Edge has mostly been a force for good, but lately, its members seem to have drifted off into matters personal, neglecting their purpose. The Vatican feels they are now more of a threat than a help.” Edge got on the wrong side of an Englishman named Benson when it rejected him for membership. He retaliates by doing away with Edge’s members. The church can’t have a British protestant going after Edge, so Father Richard hires Taylor to solve the problem.

Benson gets on Taylor’s wrong side by stealing a jeweled cross from a convent. Taylor enlists a thief to recover the cross and a hacker to make trouble for Benson. Taylor’s actions will doom at least one of those men. They will also doom a promising relationship with a new lover while making him unpopular with a neighbor who is shagging Benson.

Taylor visits two brothers who stole a client’s dog and introduces them to his hurly. He takes on a cop who is beating his wife. He takes on another kiddie fiddling priest. A cancer victim wants Taylor to kill him. In other words, the plot is typical of a Jack Taylor novel: seemingly random events all connect in the end.

Bruen’s unconventional writing style is all about the rhythm he creates with paragraph breaks. Bruen writes wonderful and surprising sentences. My favorite in Galway’s Edge: “I had to dial it back not to smack him in the mouth, but in my experience no good comes of beating the clergy, they keep coming back.”

Bruen grounds his stories in current events and references to pop culture. He quotes song lyrics, sentences from novels, and lines from movies that relate (more or less) to Taylor’s life. Taylor sometimes comments on the news. More often he lets the news sit — thousands of deaths caused by an earthquake in Turkey, a shortage of housing for refugees from Ukraine — to illustrate the larger tragedies that overshadow his smaller ones. There may be no character in crime fiction more tragic than Taylor, but he never loses his understanding that he is living a small life in a big world — and a good life, despite the beatings he takes, compared to earthquake victims or Ukrainian refugees.

I particularly enjoy Taylor’s discussion of the books he’s reading. “I have always found calm, solace, and comfort in books. When my mind is on fire and I’m not quelling it with booze, I rely on books,” he says. I don’t drink much these days, but I can relate to finding solace and comfort in books. I always find entertainment, if not comfort, in Bruen’s novels. Galway’s Edge isn’t as edgy as some, but it’s still a good read.

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Battle Mountain by C.J. Box

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on February 25, 2025

C.J. Box is capable of writing decent thrillers when he isn’t distracted by the need to feed red meat to extremists. To be fair, Box might not be pandering to a particular audience. He might simply be writing about the kind of people he meets in Wyoming. Joe Pickett, the game warden who is the series’ protagonist, studiously avoids expressing political opinions. On the other hand, Pickett never denounces the crazy views that other characters espouse, including the conspiracy theories embraced by his best buddy, Nate Romanowski.

I’m a bigger fan of the early novels in the series, but some of the later ones, including Battle Mountain, avoid culture wars and remind readers that Box is a capable storyteller. The latest Joe Pickett novel’s downside is its focus on Romanowski rather than Pickett.

A governor who used Pickett as his errand boy before leaving office has won another term. That’s unlikely, given that the governor is a Democrat. It’s been fourteen years since a Democrat held that office in Wyoming, but this is fiction. I welcome the governor’s return and hope he’ll help the series revisit its roots.

The governor sends Pickett to the southern part of Wyoming to look for his son-in-law, who has (at the governor’s urging) taken a gig as an assistant to an elk hunting guide. The son-in-law, Mark Eisele, hasn’t checked in with his wife for a couple of days. Neither the governor nor Pickett know that Eisele and his boss stumbled upon a group of armed men who are holding them as prisoners.

The armed men intend to attack a gathering of people who call themselves Centurions. The Centurions are leading members of the military-industrial complex. They gather at a resort in Wyoming every year so they can make deals, get drunk, wear silly costumes, and bang prostitutes. The armed men who want to kill them are a collection of left-wing anarchists and right-wing disgruntled ex-military.

The grievances of the former soldiers are hard to understand. They complain that America sent them to wars they weren’t allowed to win. That sounds like Vietnam to me, but the former soldiers aren’t that old. One of them is unhappy about the way America withdrew from Afghanistan, a complaint that would be more legitimately voiced by abandoned Afghanis than American soldiers. None of their complaints seem like persuasive reasons to attack military leaders at a resort, but again, this is fiction, so I accepted the premise for the sake of being entertained by the unlikely plot.

Pickett will eventually encounter the domestic terrorists, but not before Romanowski finds them. Romanowski is a psychopath. He’s been on a revenge tour ever since his wife was killed. Earlier in the series, Romanowski killed three of the four men he blames for her death. The object of his wrath in Battle Mountain is the fourth man, Alex Soledad.

Romanowski left his daughter Kestrel with Pickett so he could run around killing people. Not ideal parenting behavior, but Pickett and his wife are responsible adults, which is more than anyone could say of Romanowski. Kestrel might have a chance at a normal life if she isn’t raised by a psychopath.

Romanowski is joined in his quest by Geronimo Jones, another disgruntled veteran who wants to make Soledad dead. In the kind of unlikely coincidence that is common in modern thrillers, Soledad is leading the domestic terrorists in their attack on the resort.

Some parts of the novel are just silly. Romanowski has acquired the power to mind meld with his falcon, allowing him to enter a trance that allows him to see terrain through the falcon’s eyes. Romanowski and Geronimo gun down anarchist “hippies” (meaning young liberals) but spare terrorists who once served in the military because they share Romanowski’s delusional belief in conspiracy theories. Ivy League universities are condemned as bastions of liberalism without acknowledging that Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts — conservatives all — graduated from Ivy League law schools. So did Scalia, for that matter. But the novel is accurate in its depiction of irrational thought that drives so many nutcases, so I can’t complain that Box populates his novels with the kind of lunatics who are drawn to sparsely populated states like Wyoming.

The plot generates some excitement on its way to a predictable ending. The story moves quickly. While the descriptions of Wyoming's mountains might be more enjoyable than the standard thriller plot, Battle Mountain is worth saving for a beach read when summer arrives.

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