Where there’s muck there’s brass, as my Yorkshire brethren would say, and, as you’d less likely hear a Yorkshireman say, where there’s social upheaval there’s great crime fiction.  The American melting-pot has been churning it out for over a century, post-Fascist Italy has more recently got in on the action, and with Little Girl Lost, Brian McGilloway is flying the flag for the troubled province that is Northern Ireland.

Twentieth century Northern Ireland would, in theory, have been the perfect breeding ground for great crime fiction, what with the pervasive terrors of sectarian violence and incessant political struggles.  Instead, it is the changing political, social and economic tide of the twenty-first that has put McGilloway more at ease with setting police procedurals in his Northern Irish homeland.  While the subject matter was tragically always there for all to see, McGilloway has, until recently, been loathe to traverse the religious and political minefield that would have come with tackling the subject of Northern Irish policing.  For decades, nothing in the province has been apolitical, and crime writing has been no different.  However, with a new sense unity making itself felt on the streets of McGilloway’s home town of Derry, the author now feels able to take the plunge.
Following his acclaimed Inspector Devlin series, Little Girl Lost introduces a new protagonist for a new series, DS Lucy Black.  Black is young, vulnerable, filled with compassion and dedicated to the police force only inasmuch as she sees no other employment on the horizon.  In short, she is the antithesis of the genre’s archetypal protagonist, and refreshing for it.  Throughout the course of the book, she battles with a seemingly indifferent mother, who is also rather inconveniently the Assistant Chief Constable, and works tirelessly to care for her father, a former RUC man struck down with the early stages of Alzheimers and living in a state of confused fear.  Her actions and reactions towards both are what McGilloway uses to endear her to the audience, and as more of the history that haunts the broken family is revealed, the effect only becomes more powerful.

Black’s professional life is scarcely less harrowing.  Involved in a missing persons investigation centring on the daughter of a property magnate, the heroine also finds herself thrown into a second case, that of another missing girl, found wandering in a snow-covered wood, misted in blood and wearing only pyjamas.  In the face of hindrances from her superiors, the fragility and vulnerability of the victims spurs Black on to bring their tormentors to justice.

Despite the seriousness of the case becoming immediately apparent, Little Girl Lost is something of a slow-burner.  The character of DS Black only begins to crystallise after a third of the book has elapsed, and the case takes shape within a similar time frame. During the opening period, the narrative is carried mainly by McGilloway’s deft social and political commentary, and his attention to detail in bringing Northern Ireland to life.  If this seems critical, it needn’t.  Ultimately McGilloway packs a hearty punch into the final two thirds of the book, and covers that most vital of bases in serial crime writing, to leave the reader wanting more.

Little Girl Lost also conveys a message of hope.  McGilloway writes in the mould of the Roman God Janus.  He casts a sombre eye back at a past which is “still infecting the present,” but also ensures the changing mood in Northern Ireland is well reflected.  Dissidents are cast as unwanted outsiders, and anti-police sentiment is characterised not by political opposition but by standard delinquent thuggery.  Amidst all this, McGilloway also manages to weave a sound police procedural, plausible and well grounded like all the best of its ilk.

The author has in some quarters been referred to as a Northern Irish Ian Rankin.  A bold statement indeed given the collective weight of Rankin’s contribution to the genre, but stacked up against Rebus’ own debut Knots and Crosses, Little Girl Lost compares favourably.  It is atypical, in places heartbreaking and always intriguing, and entertains while lifting a curtain on one of the most troubled places in Europe.  On the strength of this outing, the DS Black series is definitely one to watch.

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