Christopher Petit Livres

O'Grady comes home from jail to an Irish area of London weathering the harsh new climate of Mrs. Thatcher’s Britain. Though this is a place he recognizes, he now feels lost in it. His estranged wife has moved on, and the daughter he barely knows is living with a wealthy record producer. Alcohol and the random chances it brings begin to define his life. People offer him schemes and fantasies, and he is expected to perform some action that will change lives. Undermining the conventions of the thriller, this book is an evocation of the grey avenues and pubs of Irish London as its most hopeless, semi-criminal milieu of the lost.

Set in Belfast in the mid-1980s. Detective Inspector Cross gets involved in a pattern of death that grows ever more intricate with each executed murder committed by the Psalm Killer. The murderer taunts Cross and his assistant WPC Westerby with biblical messages and a growing toll of victims.