Undertow is Anthony J. Quinn’s fourth installment in the Inspector Celcius Daly series. References are made to previous personal entanglements, family tragedies, and investigations, but I was comfortable reading this police procedural as a standalone. The author’s lyricism and poetic prose elevates this crime novel to a work of Irish literary fiction.

The tale is set in the borderlands between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, “a place for settling old scores, where allegiances and politics could be easily erased if the price [is] right.” The mystery revolves around Daly’s investigation into a murder: a detective from the Republic is found dead in a loch in the North. An outsider in his own police force, Daly is hampered at every turn on both sides of the border.

The grim desperation and violence of The Troubles still casts its shadow over this no man’s land, and the socioeconomic toll of the divide is explored with keen insight. The commentary is woven seamlessly into the telling and never has the tone of authorial interjection. This is a complicated, fraught setting rife with betrayal, greed, and corruption. The confusion of the back and forth traipses across the border and the blurred lines between “good” and “bad” felt frustratingly authentic.

The protagonist is a product of the region and the previous turbulent decades. He is marked by the murder of his mother, haunted by the disapproving ghost of his father, trapped by a crumbling home that is not his own, hampered by the religiously oppressive pall of guilt and shame, and staggeringly alone after a failed marriage and his own proclivity for isolation. His melancholy nature frequently ventures into maudlin tedium, and my sympathy for him was oft outweighed by pity. He is a flawed and fallible hero, real and weak and mired in the past. On a number of occasions, his depressive bents threatened to overtake the forward momentum of the plot, but on a whole, the author created an engaging balance between the cerebral and the active unraveling of the mystery.

Quinn does a stellar job of portraying the dark underbelly of a country that is oft romanticized and exploring the repercussions of one uncertain era while another looms in the future. The language is noteworthy, and Quinn’s descriptions are so vivid I was transported to the haunting landscape while reading. Undertow is a cerebral, introspective read full of intrigue and betrayal with a setting that is atmospheric and foreboding and with an astutely bleak, somber commentary on a divided country.

Recommended for fans of police procedurals and crime novels set in locales that add an additional layer of intrigue to the tale.