One-Line Summary
In July 1992 Belfast, a carjacking and a dead painter drag part-time DI Sean Duffy into a conspiracy where hitmen, spooks, and the fragile peace process collide.
Opening Impression
Hang On St. Christopher drops the reader straight into post-Ceasefire Belfast — rain-slicked streets, burned-out cars, and the low hum of unease. McKinty opens with deceptive simplicity — a stolen car, a corpse, a detective nearing retirement — but beneath the procedural surface runs a current of history and exhaustion. His trademark wit, musical cadence, and bruised humanity are intact, and within chapters the case widens into a study of compromise and complicity in a country still learning how to stop fighting.
Synopsis
Duffy, now semi-retired and commuting from Scotland, takes on a “routine” case: a painter shot after a carjacking. The forensics are wrong, the motive unclear, and the victim’s past hints at IRA links long buried. Soon MI5, Special Branch, and a ghost of American intelligence are circling. Witnesses vanish, allies turn watchful, and Duffy realises the crime scene sits on fault-lines that run from paramilitary backrooms to peace-talks boardrooms. What begins as a homicide inquiry becomes an autopsy of the peace process itself — every truth Duffy finds has already been bought, sold, or buried.
Analysis
Structure: Crisp, self-contained chapters act like reports: evidence, deduction, consequence. The pacing is relentless but never rushed, mirroring the procedural mindset McKinty excels at.
Characterisation: Duffy is older, sardonic, more aware of his limits. His humour shades into melancholy; his decency costs him more each time. The supporting cast — Carrie O’Halloran, cynical brass, rival spooks — are drawn with veteran precision.
Style & Voice: Pacy noir laced with political irony. McKinty’s sentences move like baton-blows — clean, rhythmic, blackly funny. He evokes Belfast’s sensory texture: diesel, rain, radio static, the echo of old loyalties.
Themes: Morality versus necessity; the weaponisation of information; the price of surviving long enough to see peace re-written by others. The novel asks what justice looks like once everyone has made a deal.
Verdict
Hang On St. Christopher proves McKinty hasn’t lost a step — if anything, he’s leaner and wiser. It’s both a gripping police procedural and an elegy for a generation of detectives outlived by their wars. Sharp, humane, and darkly funny, this is the Duffy series in late-period maturity: every punch lands, every silence matters.
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