Northern police procedural with a literary twist is wonderfully evocative
P
SNI Inspector Celcius Daly is a troubled soul. Described as ‘forty-four, divorced and childless’, he lives a reclusive existence in a dilapidated and isolated cottage on the shores of Lough Neagh.
His professional life is also teetering on the edge as he awaits the outcome of an internal investigation into his alleged mishandling of a previous case.
Relegated to the sidelines of the force and working on monotonous court duty, he is first on the scene in Anthony Quinn’s new novel Trespass, when a young boy goes missing from the court grounds.
His plight to find the child leads him to a group of local Travellers already under investigation for their involvement in smuggling and organised crime.
This connection reveals a 30-year-old unsolved mystery that took place during the Troubles — the disappearance of a young Traveller woman and her child.
Despite happening decades apart, could the two cases be linked?
Perhaps not surprisingly for a novel based in Northern Ireland, the Troubles, the Travelling community, lawlessness in the Border regions and rogue politicians all end up inexorably intertwined, but as the layers of history are painstakingly stripped away, the truth is finally revealed.
Anthony J Quinn’s literary descriptions of the bleak Northern Irish landscape are wonderfully evocative, but the ghostly and supernatural feeling he aims for is overdone at times and distracts from the story.
Initially slow to get into gear, mainly due to the lengthy atmospheric descriptions, the plot picks up half way through and culminates in a satisfying end.
This is the fourth novel to feature Celcius Daly and if you enjoy a gritty police procedural written with a literary twist, this one is for you.