Why a Booktrail?
1983: A blood trail through the Northern Ireland troubles and a visit to Newburyport on a trail…
I Hear the Sirens in the Street (Sean Duffy 2)
What you need to know before your trail
A security guard at factory site finds a blood trail that leads to a dismembered body that has been zipped into a suitcase and dropped in a rubbish dump. There is no head, arms, or legs, just the torso… so identification is not going to be easy…unless…it does have a rather significant tattoo that leads eventually to the man’s identity but there’s still something about the whole story that doesn’t add up. Sean digs a little deeper and ends up finding way more that he was ready to deal with.
Duffy becomes obsessed with this mystery and as he trawls the city’s streets and the country lanes, all he can smell is one giant rat.
Travel Guide
The historical context here is one of Northern Ireland in 1982, the Falkland’s War and the DeLorean factory.
DeLorean factory, Belfast
“The factory was on waste ground in Dunmurry WestBelfast. If coronation road was the fall of Saigon, this part of Belfast was Hitler’s last days”
Unusually for a crime novel, the geography is more or less spot on-the finer detail of the pubs Duffy visits or the street where he lives are all real. Together with the very real historical context and there is a real sense of time and place, however uncomfortable is painstakingly recreated and with it the fear and distrust of the time.
Islandmagee
Duffy’s investigation takes him from Carrick to Islandmagee to the De Lorean plant in Dunmurry, to Newburyport, Boston,USA and back again. Islandmagee or “Magee’s islandis a peninsula and civil parish on the east coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, located between the towns of Larne and Carrickfergus.
“We drove through the town of Whitehead and hugged the shore of LArne Lough until we were on Islandmagee. Islandmagee was an odd place”
There is however an added sense of menace in the novels. Belfast was not always a war zone in the ways described here. But this is fiction and so merging the areas and the time and place just draw a full picture of what it was like through the eyes of the author who was there and the research he has obviously done.
Boston, USA and the Falklands islands
The investigation takes him to Boston USA and the political setting of the Falkland islands is very much part of the overall atmosphere. On Port Stanley:
Port Stanley
“There is jubilation here in the street of Port Stanley as the Falkland islands flag once again rises above the Governors….”
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: I Hear the Sirens in the Street
Destination: Belfast, Islandmagee, Newburyport, Falkland islands Departure Time: 1983
Twitter: @adrianmckinty Web: Adrianmckinty.com/
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