About Devlin’s Dilemma by Pat McQueen
Devlin’s Dilemma – Gripping and Evocative of 70’s Small Town Ireland – Pat McQueen Delivers One of 2023’s Standout Thrillers
With a passion for exploring themes that examine and challenge the individual and collective consciences, ‘writing the wrongs’ is evident throughout Pat McQueen’s second novel, Devlin’s Dilemma.
Atmospheric and immersing readers deep in 1970’s Ireland and the parochial ways of the hometown that its protagonist left years before, this intriguing thriller finds Michael returning home for his brother’s funeral.
A narrative that Immediately puts the little grey cells to work and gets the tension mounting, this story is one of dark secrets, a connection to the murdered woman and a family history long hidden from sight.
Delivering a protagonist that readers are invested in from the outset, and mastering both plot and structure to a level that more experienced novelists would be pleased to achieve, Devlin’s Dilemma makes for a first-class thriller. It also confirms Pat McQueen as an emerging master of his chosen craft.
Set in Ireland in the early to mid-1970’s, Pat McQueen’s Devlin’s Dilemma centres on the sleepy village of Glannock. Suddenly finding itself in the centre of a murder investigation, the loathsome Dublin Garda Detective Harrington is determined to get a conviction one way or another. But when returning home for the funeral of his brother, Thomas Devlin, Michael uncovers more than he bargained for when it transpires his brother had a connection with the murdered woman.
Synopsis:
Michael Devlin returns to Ireland for his brother Thomas’s funeral, to find that he is even more of an outsider than he imagined.
Curiosity about the life and death of his brother leads Michael to unearth a history shrouded in secrets and lies and results in an unwanted dilemma for him. Love, regret, revenge, and murder conspire to test his ideals.
Love is an emotion that is never simple and although the sheer complexity of it excites and intrigues us, mystifies, and delights us, love can hurt like nothing else. The Devlin family have known this truth more than most.
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Author Bio:
A Baby Boomer born in Yorkshire and who never left, Pat McQueen says: “I Intended to go to art school as a young man but needed to earn a living if you get my drift. However, I satisfied my need to draw by producing cartoons for people’s entertainment and their special occasions.
“My working life was altered dramatically by a motorcycle accident that left me with a paralysed left arm. This subsequently led to me writing the quality procedures for the company I worked for. Although this procedural writing was somewhat dry it did reignite a desire in me to write creatively.
“My two novels to-date – Devlin’s Dilemma and The Letter both look back at the scandals that most of us could never have imagined at the time and only in recent years have become the stuff of journalistic investigations and exposés, "Writing the Wrongs" as I put it.”
PatMcQueenAuthor@gmail.com