Being asked to choose her favorite books of 2013 “kind of overwhelmed” librarian Nancy Pearl. So, “out of a sense of desperation,” she says, Pearl combed through her own personal library stacks for some of her favorite titles from years past that readers might have missed the first time around.
“All the books on my bookshelves are books that I loved. Those are the only books I keep,” says Pearl. “I think all of these books … create this world that you can spend time with and in. And that changes your life.”
We were thrilled that one of her favorites was The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty. She had some wonderful things to say about the author and the series:
“This is the best crime novel mystery that I’ve read in a long time,” Pearl says. “And when I read a mystery, I’m always looking for something more than the plot. I need it to give me something else, and it’s hard to define what that something else is — but this book does it so well. This is set in 1981 at the height of the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, and the main character, Sean Duffy, is a detective inspector with the Belfast Police Department. And he is the lone Catholic in a very Protestant police force.
“[McKinty is] a great writer. This is the first of a trilogy. The second one is already out — it’s called I Hear the Sirens in the Street — and the third one will come out this spring.”
Listen to the interview on NPR.
Request an eGalley of In the Morning I’ll Be Gone—Book Three in The Troubles Trilogy.