Pandaudio: "Police At the Station and They Don't Look Happy" by Adrian McKinty

 Pandaudio: Police At the Station and They Don't Look Happy by Adrian McKinty, 2017, downloaded from Hoopla.

McKinty's Duffy series has been very well done and very enjoyable. Duffy gets involved in more turmoil with a drug dealer murdered with a crossbow and another dealer surviving a murder attempt.

Lots of pop culture references from 1987-1988 for music and current politics. Duffy listens to a lot of orchestral music and BBC radio and it is a neat time capsule. Whether the time capsule is accurate or not is debatable. 

Anyhoo. The drug dealer murder of course ties into intrigue involving McKinty's preferred Belfast set themes: 1. IRA. 2. Unionist militias. 3. Police misconduct. 4. UK government's murderous manipulations.

Plot: Duffy's girlfriend gets pregnant. Duffy is a dick to his girlfriend's family. Duffy is kind of a pain the ass. Duffy stumbles on a IRA connection dating back to the '60s.

Comments:

• SPOILER Duffy ends up with a kill order on him from the IRA Army Council.  Duffy is abducted in Derry and the Derry commander makes an appearance. But, and this was weird, the name of the guy is redacted. I don't know if McKinty used the real name but had to avoid getting sued.
  
• BMW 535i Sport love. We know Duffy's BMW 535i car is a 535i because Duffy has to constantly tell us about his 535i car. Give it a fucking rest, Duffy.
  
• A reminder from Say Nothing (the notes of which I've not yet entered) is that NO ONE ADMITS TO IRA MEMBERSHIP. EVER. You may have left the organization 30 years ago but you say nothing.
• Famous clusterfuck love. If you did not know or cannot recall: 
• The British SAS were tailing a Active Service Unit through Spain and Gibraltar in early 1988. The IRA were planning a car bomb on Gibraltar aimed at attacking the changing of the guard ceremony. As I recall, the SAS sorta lost track of the IRA people and the car bomb and were not sure how or when the bomb would be detonated. The SAS team approached the three IRA people at a gas station and shot and killed all three. One IRA person was a woman. The reunification/Catholic side got extra pissed off that the SAS 'assassinated' a woman. 
• The funeral for the three dead IRA people was a few days later in Belfast. A Loyalist paramilitary man showed up, threw freaking grenades at mourners, shot at everyone with a pistol, ran off, was beaten, and captured. 
• The next set of funerals was for the people killed at the first funeral and involved a huge foot procession. Two British Army guys got lost in their car and drove right among the procession. The car was surrounded, one soldier pulled his Hi-Power, the soldiers were pulled from the car, beaten, and shot in the head. 
• Duffy gets involved with all the resulting riots.
  
• The clusterfuck brings up an argument I've never understood. The IRA proclaim themselves asn an Army with soldiers and at war. But, when they get shot and killed during an active operation to bomb people they complain that the IRA soldiers were not arrested. They also complain of ill-treatment and standards in British prisons but the IRA would kidnap, torture, and murder people.