The good life

A young woman wants her share of the good life - but at what cost? The fifth Inspector Minogue novel begins on Dublin’s Grand Canal. Long a favoured place for young lovers to take a romantic stroll, the canal banks have become a prime spot for drug deals and prostitution. Waters that harboured elegant swans now wash up syringes and dead bodies. This is where Mary Mullen is found, her body battered and callously left to jam in a canal lock. She wanted ‘the good life,’ but after hooking up with the notorious Egan brothers, things spun out of control. Minogue’s efforts to solve her murder plunge him into the depths of Dublin’s underworld, a maze of drug trafficking, pornography and prostitution. Every path seems to lead back to the Egans. The Murder Squad beginS receiving frantic phone calls from a friend of Mary, a petty thief and drug user: he knows something but he’s terrified of both the Gardaí and the Egans. The case is soon complicated by Minogue’s new partner Malone, a dyed-in-the-wool Dubliner whose twin brother Terry is an addict. Terry, about to be released from prison, is heading straight into the Egan’s deadly web. 'An unwavering air of menace accompanies a brilliant depiction of the city’s slatternly underside - all of it riveting to the last page.’ - Kirkus Reviews (U.S.)