CORRUPTION AND MURDER IN DUBLIN

TITLE: WINTERLAND
AUTHOR: ALAN GLYNN
Pages: 468
Date: 11/06/2010
Grade: 4.5
Library

This book is a work of fiction, yet it is scary how close almost everything in this story comes to what we read about in Irish newspapers everyday. It is all here, the developers doing as they please even if it means ignoring the rules, politicians at best turning a blind eye and people just not wanting to know.
Early one evening in the beer garden of a Dublin pub a young man with known connections to a gang, Noel Rafferty, is shot and killed. Later that same night the young man's uncle, a developer, also named Noel Rafferty dies in an apparent car accident.
Although most people are prepared to accept this sequence of events as a horrible coincidence, Gina Rafferty can't do that. Convinced that there has to be a connection between the two deaths she starts looking for one. And the more she's told to leave well enough alone, the more determined she becomes to get to the bottom of whatever is going on, while those who are behind the deaths are getting ever more desperate to keep their secrets safe. And having killed before, what's to stop them from doing so again?
This is a good thriller, made even scarier by the fact that it seems so close to what actually has been going on in Ireland.
The only minor disappointment is that the reader knows from the start who is behind the murders. You will have to read the whole book though to find out how deep the corruption runs and how long it has been going on for.