GALLOWS LANE

Disquiet along the Irish border.

Shortly before he retires, Supt. Costello DI instructs Benedict Devlin to meet James Kerr as he leaves Maghaberry Prison and warn him away from resettling in Lifford. Kerr, who’s been in trouble with the Gardai most of his life, insists that he’s changed; he only wants to talk to Peter Webb and forgive him. But Webb is killed soon after Kerr is spotted near his house, a matter extremely distressing to Webb’s wife, who at the time was entertaining her lover Decko O’Kane, ex-con, drug dealer and used-car salesman. Was Webb one of the gang who let Kerr take the fall for the Castlederg robbery? That question is tabled when someone crucifies Kerr and leaves him to die in an orchard. Another member of the robbery gang? When Decko is killed, Devlin must juggle these three deaths with the theft of a breast-cancer drug from a local pharmacy; the attack on two young female clubbers; the appearance of a Brit from Special Branch interested in a cache of guns that bespoke Webb’s status as an informer during the Troubles; and an attempt on Devlin’s life that lands his partner in the hospital. It takes one bit of videotape to nail one miscreant and another to hobble the mastermind behind him, while the Gardai must discharge one of its own for misbehavior.

Devlin (Borderlands, 2008), best of fathers and least politic of coppers, is a helluva hero elbowing his way through a gritty plot.