2 BY ADRIAN McKINTY

 A couple from Adrian McKinty that have sat on the TBR pile a while.

One is a standalone novel and a bit of historical fiction, which isn't my preferred reading. The other is from the Sean Duffy series and has one of the clunkiest most awkward titles I've encountered on my book shelves. Maybe that explains why I haven't read them. I really need to get over myself sometimes.

Of recent times, I've read and enjoyed The Chain and The Cold Cold Ground. Others way back when before I started blogging .... Fifty Grand, Dead I Well May Be and his YA Lighthouse Trilogy.

The Sun is God (2014)

Colonial New Guinea, 1906. A small group of mostly German nudists, known as the Cocovores, live an extreme back-to-nature existence on the remote island of Kabakon. Eating only coconuts and bananas, they purport to worship the sun. One of their members - Max Lutzow - has recently died, allegedly from malaria. But an autopsy in the nearby capital of Herbertshöhe raises suspicions of foul play.

Recruited to investigate the circumstances of Lutzow's death, former British military police officer Will Prior sets sail for Kabakon accompanied by Captain Hauptman Kessler of the German army and travel writer Bessie Pullen-Burry, who joins the mission at the insistence of powerful landowner Emma Forsyth. At first, members of the eccentric Cocovored seem friendly and willing to cooperate with the investigation. They all insist the Lutzow died of malaria. Still, Prior is convinced that the group is hiding something.

With no conclusive evidence that Lutzow was murdered, and preparing to head home to Herbertshöhe, Prior and his companions are invited to a late-night feast supposedly given as a send-off for the visitors, but Prior fears that the intent of the "celebration" is not to fete the visitors but to make them the latest murder victims.

Police at the Station And They Don't Look Friendly (2017) 

Belfast, 1988. A man is found dead, killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. This is no hunting accident. But uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on a high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave.

Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs, and with his relationship on the rocks, Duffy will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece.