#BlogTour ‘Blood Will Be Born’ by Gary Donelly

About the book…

DI Owen Sheen vowed to his father never to return to Ireland. But years have passed, and Sheen needs answers to the questions he has surrounding his brother’s death.

He is on loan from the Met to the PSNI(Police Serive Ofr Northern Ireland) under the belief he will be helping set up a new Historical Offences Team in Northern Ireland. On arrival to Ireland, plans change and he finds himself partnered with newly promoted DC Aoife McCusker to work on her first appointed murder investigation.

John Fryer, an IRA veteran, has recently escaped from a mental asylum. Sheen thinks Fryer was involved in the killing of his brother, and is now after him. His escape throws him into the path of deranged and dangerous Christopher Moore, and the two begin to work together to execute chaos.

As the investigation begins to unravel, Fryer and Moore’s relationship is compromised.

But will Sheen be able to put his personal agenda aside? And will McCusker keep her career long enough to crack the case and prove herself as a detective?

Set in contemporary Belfast, Blood Will Be Born is the first book of a captivating crime thriller series that delves deep in to the dark and political past of Belfast.

My grateful thanks to Allison And Busby for the blogtour invite and my gifted review copy of ‘Blood Will Be Born’, which is available in paperback from the 20th February.

As a series opener, this is a cracker-you have the establishment of characters with just enough details to coax the wary reader into committing to a new set of thrillers. And the setting…the setting is so vividly rendered that you feel you are walking the streets of Belfast. I myself have never been there, yet the historical, cultural and physical descriptions are incredibly believable.
Sheen has returned to Belfast as part of the Historical Crimes department, on loan from the Met police with a warning ringing in his ears that other detectives will be snapping at the  chance to steal his job whilst he is not looking…

But since the death of his father has voided the promise made to never step foot on Irish soil again, it is open season on trying too work out who planted the bomb that shattered Sheen’s family.

Add in Aoife McCusker trying to cut her teeth on her first major investigation, one which threatens a fragile peace that might not even exist beyond the construct of a politician’s fevre dream, and you have an odd couple with way more in common than first thought.

At the heart of ‘Blood Will Be Born’ is the spectre of boogeymen-these both within and without our imagination which haunted a fractured mind and create the bad guy against which good guys rail. But in this instance, no one truly wears a white or black hat to signify innocence or guilt. Sheen is haunted by the death of his brother, McCusker is haunted both by poor decision making in choosing an ex-partner, but also the responsibility for a child which isn’t hers. Fryer is haunted by ‘the Moley’, a creature of myth who is fed on blood,not reaslising that he, himself, is a boogeyman for others.And the Troubles themselves are fed on the blood of the innocent and guilty alike.

The haunting beginning decscribes the disappearance of one of Fryer’s victims, him being one of 3 men who worked in a group trained and recruited by Cecil Moore, one of Belfast’s most notorious figureheads. Fryer is the only one remaining, a man haunted by what he has done, whose admittance to an asylum has bought him no hiding place from his demons.

Broken out by a man with a mission of his own, these seemingly disparate storylines intersect with a brutal and vicious murder that at first looks like derailing Sheen before he even began his investigations.

What this book showed me is how little we are taught the history of the countries which are part of the UK, especially modern history. In Wales we are taught precious little about our culture and heritage beyond that which intersects with England. By the same token, I remember very little about growing up in the 80’s,beyond the television news at 6 p.m , when I’d be ushered from the room and so snap shots of the miners strikes and Meibion Glyndwr were thin on the ground.Trying to get a sense of the country you grew up in was hard when it was informed by cultural stereotypes, and the only time you engaged with this was when you were celebrating the Eisteddfod or the 5-then 6-Nations.

I read with a growing sense of horror about the things done in the name of a God and a religion ,where both sides are absolutely convinced theirs is the right one.There is so much to take in that I feel this review barely scratches the surface of the subject matter of Irish noir, or what it means-it is not my story to understand, but it is my choice to read more about it and try to educate myself about this. And this is a book which I feel will require multiple reads.

It is a mystery, a thriller, a story with a firm and definite sense of place and time which is truly incredible considering this is a debut novel. It is dark, gritty, disturbing and wonderful in all the best ways that a noir novel can be.

And the best bit about turning that final page?

Knowing that there will, in the future, be 2 more novels in the series where we can get to know more about characters who step, fully formed, from the page and about whom you care a great deal.

About the author…

Gary Donnelly is a crime and thriller writer from Belfast who lives and works in London. ‘Blood Will Be Born’ is the first in the DI Owen Sheen Belfast thriller series, published by Allison and Busby in February 2020 with the sequel, ‘Killing In Your Name‘, to follow in September 2020. The audiobook, published by Isis Publishing Ltd, is spoken by Irish actor Stephen Armstrong. Adrian McKinty, the award-winning author of ‘The Chain’, had this to say about the book: “A twisty, violent, cop thriller set in post-conflict Belfast… Brilliant. Gary Donnelly is an exciting new voice in Northern Irish noir.”
Gary attended a state comprehensive school in west Belfast, read History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and has lived and worked in London since the late 1990s. In his time he has been a Belfast cemetery manager, a business conference organiser in the City, a council gardener in Neasdon, and gained a further degree in Psychology, which he teaches in north London. Gary is married to the lovely Sacha and has two non-returnable children. He can cook up a storm and play a mean guitar (after a few drinks).
Gary has this to say about his writing: “I always wanted to write a novel and after I enrolled on a course at the City Lit two years ago, the initial outline of ‘BLOOD WILL BE BORN’ emerged from one of the homework exercises. But the story has been incubating for much longer. I left Belfast 20 years ago but you see it never really left me. The course finished, and I kept writing; on my day off, weekends and while travelling into work. I took the first 3000 words to Crimefest 2016’s Pitch an Agent slot and some top-flight agents gave the sample and the synopsis and big thumbs up, which was very encouraging. Enough, in fact, to get up at 5am to write before work, and finish the first draft.”

Links-http://www.donnellywriter.com/

Twitter @donnellywriter @AllisonAndBusby