I Hear the Sirens in the Street (Sean Duffy 2)

Travel Guide

The historical context here is one of Northern Ireland in 1982, the Falkland’s War and the DeLorean factory.

DeLorean factory, Belfast

“The factory was on waste ground in Dunmurry WestBelfast. If coronation road was the fall of Saigon, this part of Belfast was Hitler’s last days”

Unusually for a  crime novel, the geography is more or less spot on-the finer detail of the pubs Duffy visits or the street where he lives are all real. Together with the very real historical context and there is a real sense of time and place, however uncomfortable is painstakingly recreated and with it the fear and distrust of the time.

Islandmagee

Duffy’s investigation takes him from Carrick to Islandmagee  to the De Lorean plant in Dunmurry, to Newburyport, Boston,USA and back again. Islandmagee  or “Magee’s islandis a peninsula and civil parish on the east coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, located between the towns of Larne and Carrickfergus.

“We drove through the town of Whitehead and hugged the shore of LArne Lough until we were on Islandmagee. Islandmagee was an odd place”

There is however an added sense of menace in the novels. Belfast was not always a war zone in the ways described here. But this is fiction and so merging the areas and the time and place just draw a full picture of what it was like through the eyes of the author who was there and the research he has obviously done.

Boston, USA and the Falklands islands

The investigation takes him to Boston USA and the political setting of the Falkland islands is very much part of the overall atmosphere. On Port Stanley:

Port Stanley

“There is jubilation here in the street of Port Stanley as the Falkland islands flag once again rises above the Governors….”