Customer Reviews

Hidden River

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Adrian McKinty comes from a small town near Belfast and was brought up during what the Irish call "The Troubles". He has written a novel that sings of the Irish tradition, the Irish Culture and the Irish addiction. How he has come to know all of this is a little bit of a mystery, and in the telling of this story we gain a little bit of knowledge of what is in his head.

Alex, Alexander Lawson, is a junkie, a heroin addict and an ex-detective for the Northern Ireland police force. At a young age he joined the force and was promoted rapidly in to the detective division, until he was asked to resign for stealing the junk he was hired to protect. What is behind this"? Why would such an intelligent young man allow this to happen? Slowly, ever so slowly we come to learn a few of the reasons. Alex is wanted by the MI5- something is fishy in the drug world of Belfast, and the MI5 wants to know more and Alex is their boy. The MI5 frightens Alex; he can't be imprisoned and he needs to flee. Alex finds a ticket to the US in the guise of discovering just how his first girlfriend, Victoria Patawasti was murdered. The murder took place in Denver, Colorado and Alex and his friend, John are off to solve this murder.

One thing after another happens, and Alex becomes involved in an environmental group that Victoria had worked for. There are several interesting people in this group and among them is Amber, the beautiful, blonde wife of one of the owners. But, also, something isn't right in this group, and Alex finds out exactly what the problem is. Within this mess he leaves several dead bodies behind, but makes a friend of Pat, an ex-firefighter who has HIV. Quite a collection of friends has this Alex- some kind, but most of them are dark and well, murderous. Alex is led throughout Colorado and starts to gather evidence that will convict one of the owners of the murder of his friend Victoria. But then something interesting happens, and the killer turns into someone we would never expect. Except we knew this was too black and white- we suspected something was not ok. The drug mess he left in Ireland is explained in several flashbacks and that is how we come to understand. And, yes, well, never mind, read this fast paced, brilliant book for yourself.

Adrian McKinty has found a fan. He writes an intelligent mystery full of little bits of this and that, brilliantly executed and then just when you have it all figured out, BAM- you are wrong. Recommended for everyone who loves a mystery, who loves a sexy, violent novel. Enter at your own risk. prisrob

I really enjoyed this one. There are so many thrillers that I love from the start, but at about the halfway point start worry me. Will the ending live up to the promise of the great beginning? So many never do. So many have endings that are obvious, contrived or just silly. Well, Hidden River has a great ending to go with its terrific beginning. The characters are excellent. Young Irishman Alex Lawson is a former star detective, current junkie who left the force under murky circumstances. He is somehow involved in a big investigation and needs to escape for a while. What gets him out of Ireland is the mysterious murder of an old girlfriend many time zones away in Colorado. Alex is a terrific and charming hero, human, not too macho, funny and endearing. I really enjoyed this well-written thriller, which, as thrillers go, is one of the best I have read in a while. Enjoy this one.

Adrian McKinty is a fantastic writer - - to truly get it, you must listen to the audio book version of Hidden River, it is one of the best audio performance I have ever heard. This one will stay with you long after the first listen.

While hardly a household name even around noir crime circles, the talented Adrian McKinty is best known for his "Dead" series, a trilogy of the Irish brutality and passion of Belfast bad boy Michael Forsythe. "Hidden River" stands on its own - another beautifully bleak tale of a young man from Northern Ireland who follows disaster and destiny to America. This time around, substitute tragic hero Forsythe with Alexander Lawson, an ex-cop and heroin junkie, and set the American part of the story in Denver. Lawson's high school sweetheart Victoria, an Irish-Indian beauty immigrated to Denver to work in a fast-rising conservative environmental fund, has been murdered, supposedly the result of a botched burglary gone catastrophically wrong. When the girl's father asks Alex for help, he is happy to oblige, escaping to the USA just a step ahead of a vengeful Belfast police force out to silence him before he can testify against them in a high profile corruption case.

With his part time cop buddy John Campbell tagging along, Alex discovers that Victoria's former employer, The Campaign for the American Wilderness, may have motives beyond saving ancient growth forests, as it becomes increasingly clear that Victoria stumbled across something its millionaire Mulholland brother founders didn't want her to find. Alex and John fumble through the investigation, and soon find themselves over their heads and running from US lawmen as well. Meanwhile Amber, the ice queen blonde, impossibly beautiful wife of Charles Mulholland, has an apparent agenda of her own as a seemingly straightforward murder mystery spirals toward a sinister and sordid tale of political ambition and greed.

While there there is little original in the plot lines and premise here, McKinty twists and grinds familiar ground with black wit and a keen eye for cultural nuance. His Denver is "down at the heel, black, grungy, dirty, honest, and a little bit scary" - an apt description for his cast of characters as well. While McKinty's yarn starts and stops and lurches through an uneven pace, by the end you're guaranteed to be glued to a genuinely gripping climax, even though McKinty has pretty much "foreshadowed-out" any mystery surrounding the killer early on. And just when you think that the author has set you up for another melancholy and bitter tale of unfulfilled Irish redemption, a slick an unexpectedly poetic twist puts the perfect head on this neat little pint of the black.

Readers of Ken Bruen, John Connolly, Charlie Huston, or Duane Swierczynski should easily find room for McKinty's dark prose on their bookshelves - an accomplished writer who deserves a wider following.

I checked out Adrian McKinty on the advice of Gary Griffiths whom I believe to be one of the best reviewers on Amazon. I found Hidden River to be a seriously dark, bleak and melancholy book, but a good read nonetheless and I certainly plan to read more of McKinty's work.

The protagonist, Alexander Lawson, is both a heroin addict and a disgraced RUC constable, booted off the force for stealing heroin from the police impound room. Jobless, broke, living with his widowed father in the bleak environs of troubled Northern Ireland, Lawson is caught between the gunsights of a mean-spirited police corruption probe and his corrupt, drug-dealing former police colleagues who may kill him at any moment to make sure he doesn't talk. As bleak and despairing as his situation is, Lawson is further rocked by the news of the murder of an old high school flame in Denver. Her family hires him to investigate the murder privately and Lawson seizes the chance to flee Ireland one step ahead of his enemies.

The story is ruthless in its depiction of poverty, terror, and addiction on both sides of the Atlantic. McKinty flays open the desperate lives of his characters and exposes the weaknesses, self-deception, selfishness which prey upon the human spirit and the depths to which people can sink. Few of the characters in this book are admirable people and Lawson himself is an anti-hero in an unusual vein. He is saved from being an unlikeable character, marginally, because of his own anger and self-loathing and because he ultimately does attempt to break his addiction and do what he believes is the right thing. Many people, not least of all Lawson, suffer terribly before he reaches this point though. At the same time there are redeeming people in this novel with true depth of character, loyalty, and goodwill, people who struggle to help Lawson and bring a redeeming balance to the book.

If you like the occassional dark, gritty crime novel with imperfect protagonists who struggle with internal and external blackness, written in clear and direct prose then this one will hit the spot. I enjoyed the book but be warned, there aren't many rays of sunshine to be found betwixt these covers.

After Alex Lawson's mom dies he becomes a cop in Ireland. He is soon forced to resign, because while in the drug squad he became a heroin addict and his secret is discovered. He is told that he has to resign and nothing will happen to him. He does just that. Alex is convinced that he is in control of his drug habit, but he gets into some trouble with some drug dealers who want there money and he has no way of paying. As he tries to figure out what to do, more trouble comes; a cop comes and asks him why he resigned. Alex lies and pays, he gets a gun pulled on him and the cop beats him up and says he will be back. Just when everything is bad it gets worse.

Alex's dad tells him some bad news. His old girlfriend, Victoria Patawasti, whom he is in love with, has been murdered and the wrong person was put in prison for it. Her parents know that he was a cop and ask him if he would go to America and solve the case. Very hesitant he says he will. They pay for everything, and Alex is away from all the troubles in Ireland. He is accompanied by his best friend who also was a cop, John.

When they arrive in Colorado they get there motel. Alex is anxious to fin somewhere to get his drugs. They find out where Victoria worked and interview a worker named Mr. Klimmer. He says that only a few people would be able to get into her computer, where the reason she was murdered is. While Alex and John are interviewing him they come to some difficulties, Klimmer freaks and starts yelling at them to get out and he is about to fall off the terrace, John goes to grab him but it's to late. He falls to his death with several witnesses thinking he was pushed. John and Alex runaway and are being chased by the cops. Alex gets shot in the arm. They finally are in the clear and get on a train, where they meet a cop named Redhorse. He seems to not know anything that's been going on. When the train is somewhere else in Colorado they go to a motel, which is full and the clerk says to stay with a man named Pat. They go there and end up staying with him for awhile.

Alex does his drugs and stuff. He gets a job at Victoria's old job. He meets three possible suspects one unlikely. Charles and Robert who are brothers and Charles' wife Amber. He becomes very close to her. She has an affair with him. Alex is convinced that she did not kill Victoria. He goes to his place one night and goes down the hall to Pat's place because John is with Areea, his girlfriend, who is an Ethiopian whose family is illegally in America, and can't afford to be sent back home.

While at Pat's, Alex hears something, then he hears a scream. He runs down the hall to his apartment and the door is wide open. As he walks in he sees blood all over, he goes into the bedroom and sees John with a knife through his heart. There is blood everywhere. John points to the closet and then dies. Alex goes to the closet and sees Areea, who runs away. Alex goes and tells Pat what happened and that it's his fault, he was the one who was suppose to be killed. Pat takes care of it and tells the Ethiopians a story that they can't refuse. So they help clean the house and get rid of the body. After that Pat and Alex go to his other house. Alex quits drugs. He decides he is going to call Charles and tell him he killed the wrong guy. He says on the answering machine to meet him at the cemetery. When Alex goes there Charles is not there it is Amber. He starts yelling at her and then gets shot at, he runs and get shot in the leg. When he finally gets out of the cemetery, he jumps into a river, and washes up on shore. Very slowly he goes to Pat's who takes care of him. When he is better he decides he is going to go to this work party and kill Charles. Pat is against it, but finally says he understands. Alex sneaks in to the party and sees Charles, when he gets about ten feet away he discovers that it wasn't him, it was Amber. One of the bodyguards sees him with his gun and shoots at him and misses. Alex gets out unseen. He runs to a train station and goes to the airport and flies home. He is in hiding for a while, when that same cop finds him. He says if Alex tells him why he resigned and who was in charge of the drug thing he would leave Alex alone, He told the story, then he lied and said it was John who did iy, but that he was in America. He left.

Later, Alex called Redhorse and tells him all that happened and that it was Amber who killed Victoria and that the gun was in a dried up rive. Amber was arreste and put in prison. Alex was back to his old life and free of drugs.

I'm not sure the book is as good as his debut,_Dead I Well May Be_, but it is still pretty good. And McKinty sure likes his femmes fatale. His protagonist, Alex Lawson, is a former policeman in the Ulster Royal Constabulary in Northern Ireland. Lawson stumbled onto some things he'd have been better off not knowing while working undercover in the drugs squad and shortly thereafter, he was fired, having been caught stealing heroin from the evidence room. Now, he's struggling to get by and raise the cash for his next fix, when a couple of things happen. First, a policeman from Scotland Yard, part of an inquiry into corruption in the Irish force, pays him a visit and isn't satisfied with Alex's claims that he knows nothing. Second, Alex receives the news that a former girlfriend of his has been killed in Denver, Colorado, where she was working for a non-profit environmental group. When the girl's father hires him to look into his daughter's death, Alex is able to get out of town for awhile, one step ahead of both the British inquiry and the corrupt cops who'd like to silence him.

McKinty does a great job of describing Denver and its environs (the book jacket indicates he lives there now, having relocated from Northern Ireland). Alex goes undercover, working for the environmental group as a fundraiser, and is trucked to various neighborhoods around town to go door-to-door, and the descriptions of these neighborhoods never rings false. Plus, Alex and a friend who came along to America with him find lodgings in a run-down building on notorious Colfax Avenue, a place where it isn't that difficult for Alex to find his next fix.

The book does a good job of charting his downward spiral and his self-justifications that he's not really an addict. It becomes clear to him that someone in the non-profit must have discovered that his old girlfriend had stumbled upon accounting irregularities and that that's why she was killed. The group is the baby of a rich young man with political aspirations and either he or his brother or his beautiful wife knows more than they're letting on.

This was a good follow-up to _Dead I Well May Be_, and though it covers similar bleak noir territory, it never gets quite so gritty or hopeless as that previous novel, though Alex's heroin addiction does threaten to drag him down. He makes several poor choices that result in a number of additional deaths and we (and he) have to wonder if he wouldn't have been a bit sharper without the drugs. But ultimately, the book holds out some hope for his redemption and ends on a hopeful note. McKinty is a great talent and I'll be looking forward to wherever he decides to take me next.

I dont have anything to do add except that I really enjoyed this book and Im a bit confused about the reviews that said that they figured out who the killer is before the detective did and that they could see it coming. MacKinty tells you who the killer is in the very first chapter. Read the free extract - the killer gets named at the bottom of page 6! Let me repeat MacKinty gives you the killer's name. You're supposed to know who the killer is, you're not figuring anything out. This isn't a mystery novel is a noir thriller. Duh indeed.

I really enjoyed this book, it is a fun read especially if you have lived near Boulder and can recognize the places and the people shaping the backdrop to the story.

This book hooked me from the beginning. Not only is there an intriguing mystery to be solved, the words are written in a beautiful, lyrical, poetic way -- even if the subject matter is dark and menacing. I love all books by this author but I think I love this one best. It was my first McKinty book -- and you always remember your first ;->

Alexander Lawson, the protagonist, is flawed but completely likable and complex, and the city of Denver is as much a character in the book as is the woman whose death Lawson investigates. McKinty takes you on a harrowing ride through the bad streets of Belfast and Denver, and ties it all up with a neat red ribbon.

Look out, suspense writers -- a new bar has been set.