Blog Tour: Death Rains Down by Kevin McManus

Synopsis

Introducing Detective Ray Logue. A renegade, hard living & damaged cop. Full of Irish charm & the best detective in Port Ard.

Detective Ray Logue has become something of a maverick in Jim Mulcahy’s police department, having never quite got over the death of his wife 12 years earlier.

Now a hard-drinking loner and occasional loose cannon, Logue is a thorn in Mulcahy’s side, who occasionally crosses the fine line of taking the law into his own hands to see justice served.

As the body count starts to rise, Logue suspects he may have stumbled into a dangerous web of lies and cover-ups, stretching from his own department all the way to the very top of the political spectrum.

From the law-enforcers to the law-makers, from respectable businessmen to Russian mobsters – a sinister hand is exercising an iron grip across the whole social order and it will destroy anyone who dares get in its way.

About The Author

Kevin McManus is an Irish author. He primarily writes Crime Fiction novels but also delves into writing poetry and short stories. He lives in County Leitrim in Western Ireland with his wife Mary and their dog Jack. He works by day as a secondary school teacher. Kevin has produced a series of novels featuring an Irish Detective called Ray Logue and a series based around a New York Detective called John Morrigan. His debut novel published in 2016 was “The Whole of the Moon”. In a previous incarnation, Kevin was a bass guitarist in several rock bands for over twenty year. Kevin is a supporter of Aston Villa FC which has caused him to age prematurely.

My Thoughts

Thank you to Zoé at Zooloo’s Book Tours and the author for a free copy of the book with a request for an honest review.

The story opens with a young Polish woman called Anna being found murdered in a property in which she was supposed to be conducting a viewing for the estate agents that she works for. As the investigation unfolds, more bodies turn up and links to drug smuggling and police corruption come to the fore.

This crime thriller stood out to me through the characters of Logue and his partner McGarry. They relationship between them was excellent and the characters leapt off the page. There was a lot of banter and it was a little laddish in places, but I’m thoroughly intrigued by the character of Logue and how his demons are affecting his work. I’m surprised he hasn’t been suspended for some of his antics to be honest!

The plot was fast paced with lots of action. The crime went quite deep into drug related crime and police corruption which set the book up for a series as I don’t think these aspects were completely resolved by the end of this relatively short crime novel. It definitely leaves the reader wanting more instalments to get to know Logue and the rest of the Port Ard police force more.

The book was a good, quick read for me, although I think it could have gone a bit deeper into some aspects of the plot as it felt a little rushed in places. The first instalment in this series holds a lot of promise.