Bad things happen everywhere

IRISH thriller/detective fiction hasn't exactly gripped the imagination of the genre's addicted readership. Perhaps it's the setting. Both country and capital have such a long standing and glittering literary history that the international reader, either can't accept that "had" things happen here, or refuses to believe that we have writers who are capable of capturing the essence of something other than the soul, or the "craic".

Certainly, it's unfair to compare Irish thriller writers with their (specifically) American counterparts. To date, Ireland does not have the equivalent of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen or James Ellroy - or, indeed, a Sara Paretsky or Patricia Cornwell - a fact yet again compounded mostly by geography, history, and social conditioning. Thriller writing doesn't have to be loaded with wit, sex, sarcasm, hard drugs, more sex, and staccato sentences barked out with an American accent for it to be any good. Popular culture unreasonably dictates it just reads better that way.

Eugene McEldowney's main character, the 53 year old RUC Superintendent Cecil Megarry, is very much of the European school of detectives. Thoughtful, methodical, and regretful, he has a harsh yet humanistic approach, to life. He could not be termed intellectual or spiritual. He likes the basic pleasures of a man of his age and status: the structured yet haunting informality of traditional Irish music, lots of Irish whiskey, and, the occasional appreciative lingering glance at beautiful Irish women.

Megarry is a very likeable, old fashioned character, a domesticated man with decent values who recognises too well his imminent retirement, age, and the pain his vocational career has caused his family. His all pervasive presence alone gives The Sad Case Of Harpo Higgins - the third of the increasingly, successful Megarry series, and the first to be based in Dublin - a solid core of sedate dependability, a facet of the book that enables it to sit comfortably alongside the likes of Inspector Morse and Maigret books.

The post peace process plot is neatly designed and straightforward: following, a mild heart attack Megarry is recuperating at his sister in law's home in Howth, taking the Southern sea air, enjoying the rocky walks. He meets a colleague for lunch who tells him of a newly opened, apparently motiveless murder case: a young man killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Megarry's curiosity is immediately aroused - there are only so many times a convalescing policeman can walk around the Hill of Howth, after all - and the next you know he's neck deep in a plot involving drug barons, sexual abuse, bright young things, police corruption and disapproving looks from his beleaguered wife, Kathleen.

What makes The Sad Case Of Harpo Higgins so readable is its leisurely pacing and its gentle, well observed sense of humour. (When Megarry contacts his office in Belfast, he's informed that "this peace dividend isn't all it's cracked up to be. They've started to cut police overtime. A lot of the guys are complaining.") It's a contradiction in terms, but this thriller succeeds by a reversal of the usual cut and thrust editing, wisecracking style of the genre.

What lets it down is its conspicuously "nice", essentially uninformed middle class tone throughout. For a book rooted in Dublin's drug culture (from shooting up heroin in squalid flatland to snorting cocaine, in trendy nightclubs) there is a noticeable lack of authenticity and realism. The surface is checked out, but not the underbelly. Also, I could certainly have done without the periodic lapse into descriptive cliche in Megarry's world, the rain beats a "tattoo", the sky looks "angry", and the sea is in "turmoil".

Minor criticisms aside, this engaging, well written mystery series looks set to run and run, but my guess is that Megarry yearns for a swift return to the streets of Belfast.