TAKEN IN DUBLIN

Part two of the second Daley trilogy

Sean Daley is a cop, always in trouble, but never in the dock.

Inspector Sean Daley, a clever but controversial detective, with a reputation for unorthodox, cranky, some would say aberrant, even deviant methods, and a nickname, ‘Deadly,’ coined by a few close colleagues; fewer know of his dark past with Special Forces.

During a family holiday in Ireland, being unable to look the other way, Sean is sucked into a Garda Siochana operation that threatens his and his family’s safety, puts him in confrontation with kidnappers stalking him, places him under suspicion when ransom money is traced to a Kent bank, which forces he and his police boss, DCI Debbie Anslow to return to Dublin to clear his name, where they are lured to a meeting at Trinity college to watch in horror as 19-year-old Abigail Vitter, the US Ambassador’s daughter, is abducted and her security detail violently immobilised.

Aware that a member of Garda Siochana must have been involved in the plot to get them there, to implicate them, they are forced to hide until they can work out how and why it happened.

Can they trust friends, Gabriel and Teresa Devlin; or undercover cop, James Mctierney, who’s on the edge of sanity, and embedded in the Quillan crime gang?

What about justice campaigner Morgun (Ginny) Lawlor, whom they meet to share information, but are snatched as they leave the venue; did she plan it?

Who are their captors, specialists of tiger kidnapping, police, agents of the Irish State, or a foreign state, or the FBI?  Any one of them would have the skill and resources; they’re baffled, but know their future could be short and painful.

It’s out of the frying pan into the fire when, having escaped and rescued Abigail, the investigating authorities lock them up. This time it is ‘Ginny’ to the rescue in a most audacious manner.

They must still answer the question, was Abigail abducted for a ransom, to be demanded by a crime group; was she abducted by a crime group acting as a proxy for a foreign power; or was she abducted by agents of a foreign power; and in both the latter cases, what would be the motive behind it; could it be to destabilise the one-year-old Northern Ireland Peace Agreement?

The path to conclusion involves murder, torture, corruption, tragedy, and romance as they deploy their skills in deception, disguise, and disinformation, thereby exposing previously unknown connections between security services, police corruption and historic crimes.

The other books in this trilogy