Inspector Matt Minogue Books
A student’s murder in the grounds of Dublin’s famous Trinity College brings out Ireland’s darker secrets.In this first of the ten-book Inspector Matt Minogue series, a brutal murder in the grounds of Trinity College, Dublin sparks a police investigation with unexpected consequences for Sergeant Matt Minogue of the Garda Murder Squad.When the body of student Jarlath Walsh is discovered with his head beaten in, Minogue instinctively knows that this is no random killing. Walsh was an idealist, an innocent, as his grieving girlfriend Agnes McGuire confirms, yet someone wants Minogue to believe that Walsh was a drug-pusher who got what he deserved.As the Sergeant digs deeper into the case, Dublin is rocked by IRA violence - a violence which seems somehow linked to the student’s murder. Only after Minogue himself is nearly killed does he discover the truth, when a hair-raising chase ends in a fateful clash in that no-man’s land which is the border with Northern Ireland.'A tragic drama involving many characters, each so skilfully realised that one virtually sees and hears them in this extraordinary novel.’ - Publisher’s Weekly (U.S.)
A harmless English ex-pat retiree is strangled in his rural cottage.In this second of the Inspector Minogue series, Arthur Combs is found murdered, the life choked out of him by a rope around his neck and a knee between his shoulder-blades. The method is obvious, but the motive is far less evident. As an English expatriate retiree in Dublin, the decrepit seventy-three year old Combs lived a solitary existence with few friends, but no enemies. Or so it seems when Sergeant Minogue is assigned to the case. As the investigation gathers momentum, however, it is soon clear that this ‘terrible ordinary man’ is of extraordinary importance to British Intelligence. London’s MI5 Security Service is terrified about secrets Combs knew and threatened to reveal, secrets that could spark a major scandal and derail top-level talks between Britain and Ireland. When MI5 tries to put a lid on the Combs affair, they underestimate the tenacity of the unorthodox Minogue. Even if it means going up against the Prime Minister, Minogue is determined to discover what Britain’s spy masters are doing in Dublin.'Dublin’s answer to Maigret - a handsomely written, dark journey into Irish politics. Brady is a master of the telling detail.’ - Kirkus Reviews (U.S.)'A non-generic political novel rich in substance and raw with pain.’ - New York Times
The body on the beach was that of a young man. he had been shot in the head at close range. Professionally. In the third of the Inspector Minogue series, a body washed up on a beach is the son of a prominent Irish family – but there is a catch: ‘He’s one of our own all right, but a Jew nonetheless.’ Paul Fine was the son of a prominent judge whose family had lived in Dublin for generations and who had played a key role in the city’s small, complex Jewish community. The evidence seems to point to a Palestinian-linked organization, but dogged and fascinating detective work, and an unexpected second murder, lead the Murder Squad in a wholly new direction. Minogue has uncovered an extremist sect, one which has political ambitions and, just as ominous, police and government connections. As he unravels the enigma of these murders, Minogue finds himself understanding something of the Jews of Dublin, people who feel bound to Ireland and yet remain outsiders. 'Matt Minogue, the magnetic centre of this superb series... and Brady’s tone of battered lyricism are the music which keep drawing us back to this haunting series.’ - New York Times
Convinced by a brilliant but radical IRA lawyer to reopen the case of Jamesy Bourke, a convicted arsonist and murderer recently released from prison, Inspector Matt Minogue becomes alarmed when the investigation uncovers dark secrets that threaten his own life. Reissue.
When a woman is murdered after an entanglement with the notorious Egan brothers, Inspector Matt Minogue finds himself searching for clues in the realms of prostitution, pornography, and drugs, a situation that is complicated by his partner's twin brother. Reprint.
A rookie security guard at Dublin Airport spots a pool of dried blood under a rental car - an American is found bludgeoned to death in the trunk. Garda Inspector Matt Minogue soon learns that there's more at stake here than the murder of a visitor, more even than adverse publicity for Ireland's vital tourist industry. Patrick Shaughnessy, the dead man, did not travel like an ordinary tourist. He attended lavish society parties thrown by leading arts patrons, conferred with museum curators, and paid a special visit to the site of the Stone Age Carra community on Ireland's rugged west coast. Shaughnessy, it turns out, was the son of Irish American multimillionaire Johnny Leyne, and Inspector Minogue finds himself in charge of an investigation under intense media scrutiny and fraught with political entanglements. What drew Shaughnessy to archaeology and antiquities, a world as foreign to him as his absent father's homeland? What was he after, and what connection, if any, existed between his personal quest and his death? Who would want Shaughnessy dead, and why?
Booming Celtic Tiger ireland is a magnet for the world - and for ruthless crime syndicates.In the seventh in the Minogue series, Dublin is roaring, spinning and racing full throttle to the future. The tiger economy sends seismic shocks through every level of society. The din of construction rings out over the crush of traffic, while crowds spill into streets, alight with the glitter of high-end restaurants and the glare of night clubs.But Dublin's gangland bares its teeth. There is the brazen, vicious double murder of two Albanians. A Dublin crime boss is feuding with the Belfast politicos who helped put him at the top of Ireland's drug smuggling industry. Now a teenager lies dead of an overdose in a park in a swanky Dublin suburb.Enter Matt Minogue and the Murder Squad. Minogue is distracted however, wrestling with his conscience over a suspect he was interviewing who has just killed herself. Surveying the transformations around him, he can’t shake a feeling that everything is coming apart. His adopted city is also a place of wealth and runaway heroin addiction, of movie and rock idols and gangster chic. We’re not in Dublin or even Ireland now: we’re in Wonderland.'If there are authors better at chronicling the events of modern Ireland, I haven't yet read them.' - Globe and Mail (Canada)
A screenwriter needs to research Dublin’s violent criminals, but falls prey to gangster chic. How deep is too deep for his research? Ireland's Hundred Thousand Welcomes continues to draw immigrants to its faltering Celtic Tiger economy. For those hundreds of thousands of Poles - Catholic, hard-working, white and like the Irish, survivors of an overbearing neighbour - Ireland works. But the Tiger devours too. Barely a week in Ireland. 20-year-old Tadeusz Klos lies in a coma on a rainswept Dublin street. He will not survive. This murder is a tipping point. Gang violence has made Dublin’s streets a battleground. Media outrage in Poland and Ireland push the Gardaí to come up with answers. Should the fabled specialist Murder Squad really have been disbanded three years ago? Minogue is suddenly in demand. ‘Whatever you need’ he is told. With the Polish embassy pressing for answers, Garda brass passes on the pressure to Minogue. Yet Minogue’s arrival is already resented in the city Garda station into which he has been parachuted. With little to go on, Minogue soon forms a picture of a chance event: bad timing, a swarm of drunken youths, racist impulses finding an outlet. Hecontinues to call in favours, and slowly that picture begins to cloud and turn to a different story entirely. Tadeusz Klos was no angel either. He was involved in petty crime back in Poland. Ready or not, Minogue is about to drop down a crevasse into Dublin’s underworld. Not far from the busy world-class shopping and the crowded nightclubs, is where drug lords and their hired killers rule. ‘The Celtic boom may have busted but it has left behind the crime that comes with prosperity. There are no happy endings with John Brady, no pulled punches. There is justice, and heartbreak, and the knowledge that the streets will be just as dirty and dangerous tomorrow.’ - National Post (Canada)
Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' has imploded. The murder of Patrick Larkin, an alcoholic and mentally ill homeless man strikes a chord with the public. His solitary walks along the coast road in a posh suburb near Dublin had earned him the nickname 'The King of Ireland.' Months pass and the case goes cold, but indignation rises: has the case been 'kicked into the long grass?'