Excited by an upcoming book: The One You Least Suspect, from this author; a favourite of mine in this genre, I returned to one of his most brilliant creations.

Bad Blood is the fourth Lucy Black novel and demonstrates from the start why she is such an engaging character.

The author is able to give voice to the darker societal issues and challenge subjects thought by some taboo or too controversial.

Set over a few days leading up to the Brexit vote and its results this is a forensic insight into the fears around immigrants and struggles for political influence over a community.

In my opinion few authors deliver a police procedural in such an open and logical way. This happens quickly in real time as we rapidly turn the pages of this unfolding murder mystery. What I like about the writing is that not everyone is what they appear to be. People do not tell the police the whole truth and have other ways of exacting justice. The crime is not just resolved by DNA, a bloody imprint or careless CCTV capture. Information is needed, community trust and support required and clever instinctive police work is demanded.

This is all here, interspersed with human reactions to life and death with a multilayered plot that overlays the first murder.

Cleverly, the writer uses his protagonist, Lucy Black to be the conduit and integral player in the drama. Her investigations are pivotal and her insights crucial in moving the story and plot forward.

A wonderful realistic and moving drama packed with thrills and moments of great tension. I really enjoyed that the story is conveyed and delivered by believable characters. The location resonates with me and the echoes of the country’s troubled times feel genuine and drawn from the author’s understanding rather than third party research.

Above all I enjoy sharing Lucy’s journey. Her pain and unresolved issues are clear and nuanced throughout the story. Her humanity brings empathy and a reality that she is flesh and blood. Prone to misjudgment, but instinctively good. While we she her weakness and mistakes we value her shortcomings. Above all this, through her character we find relationships drawn out within the story and wonder where her own personal connections will develop.

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

This was book 4 in the Lucy Black and honestly, it just gets better every time! It reads nicely as a standalone, but perhaps it would be better if you read the books in sequence.
Well written and gripping. Recommended.

I have just finished reading Brian McGilloway's latest book in the Lucy Hart series, and yet again this new book had me gripped for the first chapter. McGilloway deals with the sensitive topics of homosexuality and racism really well and he intertwines both subject areas into the novel incorporating and introducing new characters at the same time. I have no doubt that this new book will be yet another best seller following on from his previous book Hurt.

It's always a pleasure to feature Northern Irish Noir writers onto the blog and Brian McGilloway is no exception. His DS Lucy Black series of books just go from strength to strength... with the added bonus that each of them can be read as standalones. So, Bad Blood is the fourth in the series and , as we've come to expect from McGilloway, it focuses on contemporary Northern Irish issues. Here's my review...



Just when you thought you'd about recovered from Brexit, McGilloway takes us back to Northern Ireland in the run up to the referendum... and as you'd expect tensions are running high.

DS Lucy Black is called in to a racist attack on a housing estate, seemingly ruled by Ulster First. A rogue reverend, in light of recent rulings against a cake company refusing to bake cakes for gays, advocates stoning and recently illegalised, 'Legal highs' are playing havoc in the communities.
Whilst highlighting these issues, McGilloway's style is far from evangelical. He explores them with sensitivity and knowledge in and amongst a damn good police procedural. There are many things to praise about Bad Blood. For me, the main thing is the range of very human responses each character has. McGilloway says it like it is and his characters are nuanced and all the more authentic for that. The vile rhetoric of Rev Nixon, is all the more dangerous because it is delivered with such intelligence. Meanwhile, the barely concealed prejudice of fellow police officers and the senseless thuggery of the gang leaders and their supporters is convincingly portrayed. Each character reveals a little bit about the society in which we all live... and perhaps a little bit about us too.
This is thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking too. A great read from one of Ireland's finest noir writers.

Fantastic plot love the female detective Lucy and looking forward to becoming embroiled in another installment of her adventures.

'Bad Blood' starts with the murder and subsequent discovery of the body of a young man in a park and there's a parallel storyline regarding the harassment of immigrants on a local estate. These are just the first 2 things in a number of incidents, including another murder. In investigating the crimes DS Lucy Black comes across a preacher whose sermons and thoughts are anything but Christian where the gay community is concerned, and also to former paramilitary members who seem to be involved in a battle for power within their ranks. There's are a number of twists and turns in the book - not just where criminals are concerned! I hadn't come across this author before Netgalley let me have a copy to review. Now I think I'll have to read all his others!

A good storyline, very current and shows how awful today's society is with the topics in the book. Likeable characters,but too many of them.

A complex mixture of homophobia and racism in the Greenaway Estate, somewhere in Northern Ireland, provides the story for this 4th book from McGIlloway, featuring DS Lucy Black. The book starts with a sermon from Pastor Nixon railing against homosexuality, and suggesting that homosexuals should be stoned, and is swiftly followed by the discovery of a body of a man, with his head bashed in by a rock, who turns out to have been homosexual. Alongside this, DS Black and her partner Tom Fleming, are called to the house of the Lupei family, Romanian immigrants, who have had the sign ‘Romans out’ painted on the side of the house. While they are there, Mrs Lupei gives them a leaflet that is being handed out on the Greenway Estate, which refers to Brexit, the chance to get rid of immigrants, and the statement ‘local housing for local people’. Clearly this is a family under threat, and Lucy is worried about potential escalation. Sprinkled into the mix are ‘legal highs’, drugs being sold by someone, with the claim that someone in the Lupei family is involved in selling drugs, strongly denied by Mr and Mrs Lupei. And of course, in the background is the ever-present history of Northern Ireland and the ‘troubles’. It’s an interesting complex story, characterised by the reluctance of almost everyone involved refusing to talk, or give any information out that might help the police, which makes life difficult for Lucy and Tom, and this reluctance leads to further violence. There are the usual few blind alleys and then an eventual resolution that brings all the threads together, without too many surprises.
The backstory, is that Lucy’s mother is a senior police office, who left her with her father when she was just 8 years old, but as Lucy’s mother uses her maiden name, very few people actually know that the two are related, and Lucy wants to keep it that way. She blames her mother for the family breakup, and remains fiercely loyal to her father, who is now in a care home, suffering from dementia. Lucy is living in her father’s house, and has a lodger called Grace, a street girl that she offered a home to, at the end of the previous book, and is finally coming to terms with her father’s disease. Gradually throughout this story, there is also a softening in relations between Lucy and her mother, which is interesting to watch. However, apart from this, there is almost no other personal backstory of any kind, in contrast to earlier books in the series, and I found this a little disappointing.
The main focus of the book is then directly on Lucy and Tom and their efforts to uncover who is behind the killing of the (initially) unidentified man, and those behind the targeted attacks on the Lupei family. Without giving too much away, there is somewhat of a mixed message about ‘Brexit’, immigrants, and possible links to drugs, which I found somewhat uncomfortable. However, Lucy is strong in her support of the Lupei family, making efforts to help them get rehoused away from the Greenway Estate, where they will be safe. There are sympathetic noises towards the homosexual issue, where it seems particularly difficult for members of the ‘macho’ male community, to openly admit that they are gay, and Lucy determinedly challenges Pastor Nixon on his homophobia. Lucy is a strong, likeable, detective and Tom works well as a sensible, level headed foil to her more headstrong approach. Overall, the book has strong lead characters, a complex story with some surprises, and an interesting mix of prejudices that drive the plot.

Brian McGilloway is invisible, and that is a rare talent for a writer. There are writers, many of whose work I love, who sacrifice plot for beautifully constructed passages that warrant re-reading for the pleasure of the words; there are others for whom plot is everything and who sell millions of copies despite clunky, painfully overwrought writing. McGilloway is a storyteller who, over the course of several novels, has consistently delivered entertaining, densely plotted crime stories which simultaneously comment on current affairs, particularly post-Troubles Northern Ireland life; all without such comment getting in the way of the story. He never preaches – there are enough preachers in Northern Ireland – but, while his stories flow in a way that almost makes you forget you are reading, McGilloway is also holding up a mirror to some of the events and people still holding the country back.

‘Bad Blood’ is set in the week leading up to the Brexit referendum. The discovery of the badly beaten body of a young gay man brings DS Lucy Black into contact with a community full of suspicion and intolerance – not just the sectarianism so long prevalent in Northern Ireland society but also prejudice against homosexuals and immigrants, prejudice stirred up by firebrand preachers and ex-paramilitary community ‘leaders’.

“In Northern Ireland, you can’t have your cake at all if you’re gay…”

McGilloway’s characters are fully realised. They may have stereotypical views but there are no stereotypes. The loyalist leaders, feuding among themselves, may garner little sympathy but McGilloway captures perfectly the very real concerns in the working-class estates that keeps such figures in positions of influence. “I see the end of our culture”, says the preacher. “We’re not allowed to march. We’re not allowed to fly our flag…. This peace dividend? They never told us it was for the middle classes only. They never said that the poor would stay poor.”

The threads running through ‘Bad Blood’ come straight from the headlines in a Northern Ireland where politicians are more concerned with arguing the right of a bakery to discriminate against gay people for ‘religious’ reasons than they are with forming an effective government; where paramilitary organisations drive out ‘foreign’ drug dealers only to protect their own monopolies; where dissenters are ‘six-packed’, shot in elbows, knees and ankles; where houses are daubed with anti-Roma slogans. Brian McGilloway handles these complex issues with a masterful touch, never making them the focus of the novel, rather informing a very good police procedural which can be read and enjoyed as just that. But, if the reader is prepared to dive deeper, the story is so much more rewarding.

In a strange coincidence, ‘Bad Blood’ will be published on the day of the general election, an election informed by Brexit, an election which will likely lead to further division, perhaps particularly in the only part of the UK with a land border to the Europe we are currently divorcing…

Thanks to Corsair/Hachette and NetGalley for the advance review copy.

A fantastic book. Loads of appropriate current affair matters dealt with. Thank you Netgalley.

Another excellent read from Brian McGilloway. Each book seems to improve from the previous one. This is a well written and current book with immigration, tensions in the community, gay hatred and Brexit as the theme. It is a compelling read and accurately observed. Throw in a paramillitary commander and a great ending and you have the makings of a very good book. Many thanks to Net Galley for my copy.I reviewed on Goodreads.

A complex plot based in Northern Ireland and tied to a number of political issues there that made the storyline difficult to follow.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for an advance copy of Bad Blood, the 4th Derry based police procedural to feature DS Lucy Black.

Lucy and her boss DI Tom Fleming are extremely busy. The upcoming Brexit referendum has brought a spate of crime to the Greenway estate from new gang activity to racism and finally the murder of a gay teenager. As members of the Public Protection Unit they assist all the ongoing investigations but only have the racist attacks on the Lupei as their own.

I enjoyed Bad Blood. It is a good police procedural with plenty of plot twists and seems to be a fair representation of the uneasiness that exists in the present day, exacerbated by problems particular to Northern Ireland and its history. It is an interesting read as Lucy and Tom navigate these troubled waters and manage to pull it all together. Some of it I guessed, much of it I didn't.

The novel is well paced. It covers a lot of ground so there is always something going on but it is easy to follow and I never felt lost in the welter of situations, rather, I enjoyed all the possibilities.

Bad Blood is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.