Silence

Quinn's masterly third mystery featuring Insp. Celcius Daly (after 2013's Border Angels) successfully integrates the bloody history of Northern Ireland with a suspenseful plot. In 2013, long after the ceasefire that ostensibly ended the Troubles, the police are reinventing themselves to bring "peace and order to a society splintered by forty years of violence." Against that background, Daly's probing of a fatal accident is unwelcomed by his superiors. He's curious why Fr. Aloysius Walsh, an elderly priest, ignored a police cordon and drove straight off a precipice to his death. Daly learns that Walsh was collaborating with a journalist on an investigation into the past that reached the shattering conclusion that "a secret committee of police officers, judges and politicians during the Troubles" organized a series of killings. To make matters worse, when the inspector accesses Walsh's records, he learns that the dead man believed that Daly's own mother was targeted for death and wasn't the accidental victim of a shooting he long believed. Understated but effective prose enhances a crackerjack story line. Agent: Paul Feldstein, Feldstein Agency. (May)