ABADDON

In this thriller, a detective and a psychologist become romantically involved while hunting a brutal murderer in Ireland.

The year is 1999, and Cork is experiencing a series of ritualistic murders. The female victims, appearing one month apart, all have two beauty marks on the right sides of their necks. Evidence shows they’ve been tortured prior to death and raped afterward. Chief Investigator Sean O’Neill from Dublin assists the local police with his deep cultural knowledge and keen observation skills. He quickly identifies a drawing, knifed in a tree at a crime scene, of what appears to be the Eye of Horus. Also working the case is Erin Parker, an American criminal psychologist, who’s capable of keeping up with Sean’s roaming intellect. As evidence leads the investigators around Cork and to Dublin, Erin becomes infatuated with Sean and his rational, though combative, personality. One of their conversations leads to the biblical Abaddon, “the king of the abyss, the demon of death and destruction,” whose symbol Sean mistook for the Eye of Horus. Eventually, they follow leads pointing to a Dublin gangster named Abaddon and one of his missing crew members, Ray Queen. When a man named Michael Byrne claims to have escaped being murdered, the case grows even more complex. Abdullaoglu offers sparkling portrayals of Cork and many famous locations, including the An Spailpín Fánac pub. (The book, originally in Azerbaijani, was translated by Berlina.) The author also cannily employs Ireland’s frequent rain to make collecting evidence tough for the investigators. The grisly nature of the murders will grip genre fans hard and pull them along. In a letter to the protagonists, the killer asserts, “I am the thunderstorm of all your secret dreams and desires,” which hints at a poet/murderer from the mind of Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs. But Abdullaoglu’s fondness for Sean, who’s as egotistical as he is smart, leads the narrative astray. Digressions into everything from the hormonal content of beer to the validity of patriarchal leadership often leave the pair starry-eyed and seemingly divorced from hunting a murderer.

This psychological tale brings Ireland to life, but sometimes leaves its killer in the background.