Dirty Old Tricks

A chilling noir novel set in the Belfast of The Troubles in which Pat Gray introduces us to the flawed but dogged and honourable policeman McCann. It is a welcome return to fiction after an eighteen year silence by one of Ulster's finest novelists. Eight years in C Division was a long stretch for any man to be in one of the worst posts. That would break the toughest fellow. That would make you wonder if McCann was really the man for the job. Inspector McCann is called to investigate the brutal murder of a teenage girl, at first assuming it is a sex crime or sectarian tit-for-tat killing. But another girl is killed and then his prime suspect castrated and murdered. He finds himself trapped in vicious old rivalries, unsupported and alone. Are the murders connected to 'Dirty Tricks' by the combatants in Ireland's war, or has McCann lost the plot, as his boss suggests?

Pat Gray was born in Belfast. He is the author of three previous novels; Mr Narrator, and The Political Map of the Heart, an account of growing up in Belfast which won the World One Day Novel Cup and was published in an extended form in 2001. His satirical novel The Cat was re-issued in 2015 and has been translated into several languages. He has worked extensively in Eastern Europe, but now lives in London.