It's just turned a new decade. The celebrations for the arrival of the new year are over. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy has hopes that the 1990s will finally bring better times, but he’s not counting on it. So this will be his last case.

Duffy has worked the streets of Belfast long enough. He wants out before it’s too late. A Catholic cop wears a target on his back every day in heavily Protestant Belfast. Every time Duffy gets into his Beemer, he has to check the car’s underside for bombs. Too many in the troubled city would be delighted to dispense with one more cop. He is constantly looking over his shoulder, acting more like a criminal than the police. This is no way to live. So he’ll become a part-timer now, move his wife --- well, almost wife --- and daughter across the Irish Sea to Scotland and relative safety.

"Adrian McKinty does a masterful job here and has a winning character in Sean Duffy. He really knows how to craft a story of unrelenting tension."

The case that Duffy caught right as he was about to turn command over to his replacement doesn’t really need serious attention. He could simply go through the motions, write a quick report and put it to bed. No one would fault him. In fact, everyone expects him to do just that. After all, it’s only a 15-year-old traveler girl who has gone missing. But to Duffy, every person counts and deserves the full protection of the law. So he and his team drive out to the caravan park where the missing teen’s mother lives. Thus begins a complicated pursuit of a young lady no one wanted to look for in the first place.

Katrina, or Kat as they call her, may have been just 15, but she was wise beyond her years and very clever. With a mother like hers, Kat had to invent ways to survive that didn’t include depending on family. She knows how to stay alive and become invisible when she has to. All of which makes the job of finding her that much harder for the cops. Solving this case involves a lot more danger than anyone expected and dodging many more bullets than anyone should have to endure.

While seeking out clues as to Kat’s whereabouts, Duffy and his team discover some disheartening leads that make them change their investigation from that of missing person to murder. The good news is that they have suspects --- three of them. But which one did it? All of their alibis seem thin, but they are connected in ways that hinder the police in their inquiries. However, Duffy has his own methods for flushing out the guilty party, and he won’t give up until he does.

It can’t be said, though, that Duffy has nothing to lose by ruffling feathers, because he does. He’s still short of earning his pension by three years. Being a part-timer will get him to his retirement, but that means staying in the good graces of the higher-ups. For a cop like Duffy, that can be nearly impossible to do. His superiors have to admit that the man gets results, though, just not always by methods recommended in the books. When he’s done with this, his last case, there are still a few issues left dangling. But to Duffy, they’re now somebody else’s problems.

THE DETECTIVE UP LATE is an atmospheric and shivery mystery played out on the streets of Belfast, and indeed around the whole of Northern Ireland and spilling into Ireland. The weather, dark and soggy, sets a mood on its own. Duffy and his team of cops are a rough bunch meant to go head to head with the worst of the toughs lurking in the shadows. Reading this book, one gets a sense of the edginess you’d feel living and working in a city suffering from steady unrest and incessant violence. By the end of the book, it’s easy to understand why Duffy is moving to Scotland.

Adrian McKinty does a masterful job here and has a winning character in Sean Duffy. He really knows how to craft a story of unrelenting tension.