Joe Swallow Mysteries

Meet Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow in his first Victorian Dublin mystery: June 1887. Dublin is sweltering in an extraordinary heatwave as Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee approaches. Political tensions are rising, the Land War is raging, and Dublin Castle is determined to prevent nationalist unrest from spilling into violence. Then the mutilated bodies of a man and a young boy are discovered in Phoenix Park...

Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow of the Dublin Metropolitan Police's elite G Division is called in to investigate. But in Victorian Dublin, crime falls into two categories: political offences are "special", while theft, robbery and even murder are merely "ordinary". And with the authorities focused on threats to Crown and Empire, two brutal killings are not their first priority. For Swallow, however, nothing about the case is ordinary.

As Dublin's criminal underworld begins to shift and powerful interests close ranks, the investigation draws him into a dangerous web of gang rivalry, political interference and secrets reaching far beyond the streets of the city. Cynical, stubborn and an experienced detective with something still to prove, Swallow must follow the evidence wherever it leads, even when those above him would prefer that he stop looking...

Atmospheric, richly detailed and steeped in the turbulent politics and hidden worlds of Victorian Dublin, A June of Ordinary Murders launches Conor Brady's acclaimed Joe Swallow historical crime series. Conor Brady is the former editor of The Irish Times and served as one of the three inaugural Commissioners of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. A June of Ordinary Murders is his first novel.

"Brady's powerful first mystery novel is evocative of the period." (Kirkus Reviews).

"Awkward cop makes an elegant debut." (The Irish Times)

For fans of Benjamin Black, C. J. Sansom, Andrew Taylor, Abir Mukherjee and Anne Perry, this is richly atmospheric historical crime with a distinctly Irish edge.