Winterland - Alan Glynn

As a thriller Winterland has its work cut out to convince the reader right from the start. The criminal mastermind - the head of a business consortium planning to lure lucrative American investment into Richmond Plaza, Dublin's newest development complex, a prestigious high-rise Docklands office block and one of the tallest buildings in Europe - right from the outset commits a fatal mistake in trying to prevent the publication of a potentially damaging report; he gets the wrong man killed. Noel Rafferty is a well-known gangster and drug dealer, but he has nothing to do with their business ...except he has the same name and is the nephew of the man that should have been killed. So he corrects the mistake by getting rid of the other Noel Rafferty as well and making it look like an accident. Er, right. Two Noel Raffertys killed the same day? An accident? Bit of a coincidence, is it not? Someone might think this is a wee bit suspicious...

We know this, but it takes about a hundred and fifty pages of fairly predictable plotting for the idea to get through to someone else, Noel's sister Gina. Thereafter, with no mystery - we know who the bad guys are, we know broadly what their motive is - the remainder of Winterland is concerned with the unravelling of their schemes in a comedy of errors and stupidity trying to tie up loose ends as Noel's brother Gina investigates the matter further. The story moves smoothly and professionally then, but with not a great deal of character, through the predictable stages and somewhat improbable contrivances and coincidences of its plot. Gina's career comes in handy at one stage ("I know my way around computers. I work in software"), but that's not half as convenient as an old man being found one page later who claims he can repeat verbatim conversations he had twenty years ago, just when there’s no other source back to the past available.

If you can get past such mechanical contrivances calculatedly slotting into place at all the right points, the storyline never throwing you any serious twists, then Winterland is a reasonably well constructed thriller. The political resonances of a government minister with a hidden past and the commentary on the shady dealings involved in boosting the Irish economy moreover keep the book relevant, and the writing and pacing are good enough to keep the reader involved if you have a willingness to suspend disbelief and are prepared to just go along for the ride.