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Inspector Matt Minogue #9
The Going Rate: An Inspector Matt Minogue Mystery
A screenwriter needs to research Dublin’s violent criminals, but falls prey to gangster chic. How deep is too deep for his research?
Ireland's Hundred Thousand Welcomes continues to draw immigrants to its faltering Celtic Tiger economy. For those hundreds of thousands of Poles - Catholic, hard-working, white and like the Irish, survivors of an overbearing neighbour - Ireland works.
But the Tiger devours too. Barely a week in Ireland. 20-year-old Tadeusz Klos lies in a coma on a rainswept Dublin street. He will not survive. This murder is a tipping point. Gang violence has made Dublin’s streets a battleground. Media outrage in Poland and Ireland push the Gardaí to come up with answers. Should the fabled specialist Murder Squad really have been disbanded three years ago? Minogue is suddenly in demand. ‘Whatever you need’ he is told.
With the Polish embassy pressing for answers, Garda brass passes on the pressure to Minogue. Yet Minogue’s arrival is already resented in the city Garda station into which he has been parachuted.
With little to go on, Minogue soon forms a picture of a chance event: bad timing, a swarm of drunken youths, racist impulses finding an outlet. Hecontinues to call in favours, and slowly that picture begins to cloud and turn to a different story entirely. Tadeusz Klos was no angel either. He was involved in petty crime back in Poland.
Ready or not, Minogue is about to drop down a crevasse into Dublin’s underworld. Not far from the busy world-class shopping and the crowded nightclubs, is where drug lords and their hired killers rule.
‘The Celtic boom may have busted but it has left behind the crime that comes with prosperity. There are no happy endings with John Brady, no pulled punches. There is justice, and heartbreak, and the knowledge that the streets will be just as dirty and dangerous tomorrow.’ - National Post (Canada)
Ireland's Hundred Thousand Welcomes continues to draw immigrants to its faltering Celtic Tiger economy. For those hundreds of thousands of Poles - Catholic, hard-working, white and like the Irish, survivors of an overbearing neighbour - Ireland works.
But the Tiger devours too. Barely a week in Ireland. 20-year-old Tadeusz Klos lies in a coma on a rainswept Dublin street. He will not survive. This murder is a tipping point. Gang violence has made Dublin’s streets a battleground. Media outrage in Poland and Ireland push the Gardaí to come up with answers. Should the fabled specialist Murder Squad really have been disbanded three years ago? Minogue is suddenly in demand. ‘Whatever you need’ he is told.
With the Polish embassy pressing for answers, Garda brass passes on the pressure to Minogue. Yet Minogue’s arrival is already resented in the city Garda station into which he has been parachuted.
With little to go on, Minogue soon forms a picture of a chance event: bad timing, a swarm of drunken youths, racist impulses finding an outlet. Hecontinues to call in favours, and slowly that picture begins to cloud and turn to a different story entirely. Tadeusz Klos was no angel either. He was involved in petty crime back in Poland.
Ready or not, Minogue is about to drop down a crevasse into Dublin’s underworld. Not far from the busy world-class shopping and the crowded nightclubs, is where drug lords and their hired killers rule.
‘The Celtic boom may have busted but it has left behind the crime that comes with prosperity. There are no happy endings with John Brady, no pulled punches. There is justice, and heartbreak, and the knowledge that the streets will be just as dirty and dangerous tomorrow.’ - National Post (Canada)
452 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
John Brady
58 books16 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Brady was born in Dublin, the fictional setting of his acclaimed series of Matt Minogue mystery novels. Brady immigrated to Canada at the age of 20, and has worked as a bank official, RCMP clerical officer and teacher. His seventh Minogue novel, Wonderland, taps into Dublin’s exploding economy and its aftershocks at every level of society. He lives in Toronto. He won the Arthur Ellis Award to the First Best Novel in 1989 for A Stone of the Heart.
Series:
* Inspector Matt Minogue
John Brady was born in Dublin, the fictional setting of his acclaimed series of Matt Minogue mystery novels. Brady immigrated to Canada at the age of 20, and has worked as a bank official, RCMP clerical officer and teacher. His seventh Minogue novel, Wonderland, taps into Dublin’s exploding economy and its aftershocks at every level of society. He lives in Toronto. He won the Arthur Ellis Award to the First Best Novel in 1989 for A Stone of the Heart.
Series:
* Inspector Matt Minogue
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 22, 2023
Not a very well written story, goes nowhere.
August 19, 2011
When a Polish immigrant is found beaten to death on the streets of Dublin, officer Matt Minogue is asked to investigate. Meanwhile, aspiring screen writer, Dermot Fanning, is busily researching Dublin’s crime scene. Fanning wants realism in his work, and gets more than he bargained for by witnessing a barbaric dog fight (this will be hard for animal lovers to read), among other things.
I have mixed feelings about this book. Details about the grittier aspects of Dublin are terrific, Minogue’s character is well drawn, and the author nicely balances the personal lives of characters with the main plot. The problem was that Fanning’s lack of common sense is so annoying that I found myself speed reading through his chapters, hoping to return to Minogue’s story. Minogue’s investigation became disappointing as well. Too many pages are spent interviewing surly, uncooperative teens who might, or might not, know how the victim died. These scenes slow the pace and, at times, actually diminish the tension with repetitious dialogue. Happily, the action picks up again near the end but, as in real police investigations, it seems to take a long time to get results in this 360 page novel.
I have mixed feelings about this book. Details about the grittier aspects of Dublin are terrific, Minogue’s character is well drawn, and the author nicely balances the personal lives of characters with the main plot. The problem was that Fanning’s lack of common sense is so annoying that I found myself speed reading through his chapters, hoping to return to Minogue’s story. Minogue’s investigation became disappointing as well. Too many pages are spent interviewing surly, uncooperative teens who might, or might not, know how the victim died. These scenes slow the pace and, at times, actually diminish the tension with repetitious dialogue. Happily, the action picks up again near the end but, as in real police investigations, it seems to take a long time to get results in this 360 page novel.
June 6, 2009
I love John Brady's books, but this one was only so-so.
February 4, 2014
First I have ever read of John Brady and I did enjoy it.
I loved how the two stories ended up meeting at the same point in the end. I actually didn't expect the ending so that was really fun!
I loved how the two stories ended up meeting at the same point in the end. I actually didn't expect the ending so that was really fun!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews