Critical Eye: Detective Duffy Series

Author Adrian McKinty's Detective Sean Duffy Series is about a Catholic cop in the RUC during the Troubles.  While darker than Louise Penny's Three Pines series, the stories are still the One Story about enlightenment.

In case you can't tell, I have been reading a lot during the pandemic.  In fact, I have both print and audio of most of the Duffy books.

More and more I turn to audio, because my RA and OA make my wrists hurt after about 15 minutes of using even my Kindle.  As a tesult, much depends on the reader's interpretation of the material.  Often, an actor does a better job than the writer.  

When "all things are working together for good," one is not tossed out of the story by overacting or poor accent work, or the obscurity of literary or musical or other cultural references.  The writer must write with an absolutely honest voice and the actor must approachthe tale from a gut deep honesty.

In this series, in my opinion, all these criteria are well met

The characters seem real, each with his or her own back story.  Each one changes over time.  Our hero, Sean, is fairly self aware and honestly loves his job, his land, his friends.

Events are subtly foreshadowed, not bludgeoning one over the head, not assuming the reader is poorly educated, while exhibiting a rather good grasp of the pop culture appropriate to the time of the events.

Sean lives in a Protestant neighborhood, in a semi detached house he bought outright when Thatcher privatized public housing.  Most of Sean's neighbors are renters, most unemployed, connected in some way with the IRA.  Usually the connection is the payment of protection to a local hard man. That local cell leader happens to live at the end of the row where Sean lives. Many are "on the dole" due to Ireland's passage through catastrophic levels of unemployment.  

Consequences naturally follow.  But Sean can only stand the stresses of his life if he never (well hardly ever) lies to anybody.  If he can manage it, he just doesn't speak.  If he must, he speaks his truth, even if he thinks it will get him killed.  Oh, he feels the terror, in riots, when being shot at while driving an RUC vehicle through Catholic Carrick Fergus or Belfast, or when face to face with his most dangerous neighbor.

He's not clever about women.  He fails to engage his own feelings even with himself, nevermind with the women he does truly care about.  Most leave him as a result.  He understands why, but can't overcome his male programming of stoicism and a tendency to hear a woman's conversation through the need to solve her problems, have the answer or protect her.  He's out of control with alcohol and certain substances.  

Sean is not above taking a little something that "fell off a truck," though doing do ratchets up his stress level.  I could go on, but by now you can tell whether you'd like to read the books.

So how does this series follow my theory that there is one goal, but many paths; that there is one holy journey to happiness and enlightenment?

Sean was raised Catholic.  He doesn't go to church anymore.  But his guilt drives him hard.  He thinks he has to be perfect or his wrathful God will punish him, usually  by injuring, driving away,  or killing all that he loves.  Over time, he comes to a place where he knows he doesn't know much after all, but he's at peace with his questions.

He hates people who take advantage of the poor, the marginalized, the racially or sexually diverse.  Those people use him for their own purposes, and he is not often in a position to refuse them. Eventually he gets to know some of those who are "playing the long game" politically, and he comes to understand them as human beings who are doing their best under the  circumstances.  Not to say he wouldn't throw certain ones who go way too far out of a helicopter.

Sean is the hero. His journey is recognizable to John Campbell's followers as one that passes through life, death, and the enlightenment of salvation.  He comes to peace.  Sometimes.  Sometimes he fails.  But he goes on.  He can do no other.

Can you tell I'm an avid fan?  I'll stop there.  Do treat yourself if you can bear a bit of darkness in your stories.  And let me know what you think.  Amen and amen.