PAY BACK THE DEVIL by Graham Masterton

1* How Graham Masterton has fallen. This novel insults cop procedurals - it's utterly, utterly flawed. Review contains major spoilers.

I've not read a GM book for at least 30 years. I wish I hadn't picked this one up. In hindsight, this book being on NG - no disrespect to NG intended - should have set alarm bells ringing. I mean, why would one of the current longest established authors in the world need a NG release?

The amount of Irish-speak in this is off-putting, simply because I had to keep pausing and trying to figure out what on earth the expressions meant. It's about 85% Irish-speak, which as a British reader, I'm not fluent in. A lot of what was said, I was only able to guess at. 

Book 12 in this series doesn’t need an info dump, as it's pretty much repeated that Katie Maguire is on suspension for killing 2 guys in a previous case. Yes, it's Irish policing, therefore different to British policing, and she's allowed to keep her weapon - presumably not the one she killed with - for her personal safety. She's also apparently permitted to interfere with a current case, persuading her PA and at least 2/3 other officers to breach rules and give her information, telling them she won't forget this when she's back. 

She's clearly not a cop who works by procedurals, rather instinct, but how come her instincts doesn't tell her that taking Kyna, her former lover, into her home to recuperate following the latter's suicide attempt - because Katie slept with her in an apparently gratuitous threesome and dumped her (orgasmless) - isn't a good idea? Not only is Kyna a physical and mental mess, but a hospital psych apparently thinks this is a good idea, as if they're not together, it'll just create something of an elephant in the room, for want of a better expression, and proximity to Katie is a good idea. Yes, so good an idea that on a night where Katie's fiancé of 2 days can't get home because of stormy weather, they end up having sex and the guy walks in on them, ultimately making Kyna think she's forced herself on Katie, raping her and breaking her engagement, causing Kyna to kill herself by drinking a corrosive cleaning product. Yes, in Katie's house. Yes, after her suicide attempt because she can't have Katie, who's seemingly moved on from the threesome guy to her now already former judge-fiancé guy. And no, Katie doesn't appear to have been disciplined for a coercive relationship with a subordinate. And she's not even questioned about Kyna being at Katie's home and attempting suicide there. And, forensics don't even come for the evidence when Kyna dies!! And, before Kyna's demise, though still suspended, Katie's discussing the current case with her. In detail, although Kyna's no longer on the force. And, oh, the judge  former-fiancé sounds like a eunuch, and at the end of the book, seems to have overcome his concerns that Katie's 'what comes naturally to you' urges are no longer an issue with Kyna's suicide, and comes to confess that he still loves her and wants her back. At Kyna's funeral, of all places. And the book ends there, of course.

Anyway, I've skipped ahead, so back to the case. Unsanctioned, Katie flies to Birmingham and not only finds the bombing suspect in a pub, but sees him with a former senior cop who's escaped justice by faking his disappearance, and overhears the guy's mother, the publican, celebrating the Cork bombings of the current case. And, locals hear this, too, and are watching news of the bombing on the pub's TV. But no one does anything. And, we're told that British police have a good relationship with Cork police, so why doesn't Katie just make one simple call and get all 3 arrested, thus solving the case? Really, why didn't she? I mean, she later calls the UK cops to put in place extradition measures, so yeah, this can't be justified. Disbelief can't be suspended to this degree.

Moving on - as a suspended cop, she decides she's going to investigate the suicide of another cop, and is given his phone with sex videos on it by the guy's wife. So yes, evidence is in her suspended hands, not the police's. We're treated to golden showers - yes, in detail; orgies; the cop apparently being OK with being filmed, and paying for sex whilst his wife's in late-term pregnancy. And this is someone who's described as a good cop. Katie then sets up herself as Sean SomeoneOrOther to create a persona to try and draw out the sex blackmailers (there's also another Sean character, DS Sean Begley, in the book, that the editors don't seem to have noticed. And the characters Michael and Micheál, which didn't cause confusion - not!). Katie apparently goes online and opens a bank account in the name of Sean SomeoneOrOther, and sends funds to the blackmailer. So, entrapment, but HUGE flaws: 1) you can't open an account online without ID and KYC checks. The AML systems currently in place liaise with the DVLA/Irish equivalent, and passport office, so that the ID that absolutely HAS to be provided, gets checked out biometrically. And, yes, it has to be this kind of ID for biometric approval, that stops you having to go into a bank to open an account 2) even with the checks, an account won't be opened in seconds. 3) even if she'd opened this account as a 'sub' using her established account and bank, the remitter of the payment to the blackmailer would show as Katie Maguire, not Sean SomeoneOrOther. Wasn't any fact or reality checking done? Are we meant to suspended disbelief to this degree? Why wasn't this breaking the law? She's faked ID. She's setting up a sting without authorisation.

Anyway, moving on, the guy she persuades to go undercover doesn't reappear for something like 40 minutes before she begins to suspect all's not well. TLDR, he's been flogged to near death, with apparently his spinal bones showing. She doesn’t call it in, but someone does and yes, Katie's not hauled over the coals for this. She's not asked why she's sanctioned an op that no one knows about, when she's still suspended. I kid you not. At the end of the book, we don't know if the guy'll recover from his injuries, if he'll walk again, if sepsis doesn't set in, but yeah, it's not raised. It's like Katie gets away with murder, pun not intentional.

And yeah, there might have been a fake email sent from her police email address, to the former senior cop, giving him details of safe houses to give to the bomber, which simple logic could've debunked, as she wasn't permitted to be in her office, didn't have a work laptop at home, and the email was sent DURING her suspension, given that the case started DURING her suspension. Sheesh. What were these Cork cops thinking? Why wasn't her work PC immediately taken to forensics and the IT techs? Why wasn't Micheál suspected? After all, we're told that Katie's PA had given him Katie's password. And why would, how could, Katie's PA know her password, and why would she share it? Instant dismissal grounds for both. Seriously, this book is so flawed, it's insulting to readers. 

Then, and yes, I know it's hard to keep going, and sorry this is a bit out of sequence, but Katie and Kyna go to a former criminal's place of work and Katie gives him her police login details, to enable him to log into her work email and make the faked email disappear. Yes, this guy is a hacker who's out of jail, having promised to not hack again, and by the sounds of it, he's trying to go straight. But, he helps her for the measley sum of Euros 100, and the email is gone. We're meant to believe that Irish police systems are that easily hacked? And, later, despite Micheál and another cop having seen the faked email, which caused Katie's reinstatement to be delayed, i.e. it's being officially investigated, i.e. it's on record, Katie officially denies there ever was such an email. She lies, despite others seeing the email. She's broken the law by requesting the hack of police systems. Yes, again, I kid you not. This is seriously, seriously insulting to readers.

So, that's the tale and those are my issues with it. How it's been approved for publishing is beyond me. No doubt I'll never get another book from this publisher, but ugh, readers need to be aware this book requires so much suspension of disbelief and is badly flawed. And that readers' eyes could be in danger by the amount of eye-rolling that's required. 

ARC courtesy of NetGalley aand Head of Zeus, part of Bloomsbury Publishing, for my reading (dis)pleasure. 

P.S. there's un-PC stuff like 'The reception area smelled of burned sausages, although she was welcomed warmly enough by a fat friendly woman with a prominent mole on her chin'. Really? 

And a cop giving a press conference: 'Micheál looked directly at the camera, and Katie almost felt that he was looking directly and accusingly at her. ‘I’m saying nothing more for the time being,’ he said. ‘I always rely on solid evidence, and never on theories, unlike some officers I could mention. But as soon as I have indisputable proof...' Really?