Suspenseful summer reads: The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty
The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife.
I watched with the others by the Land Rover on Knockagh Mountain. No one spoke. Words were inadequate. You needed a Picasso for this scene, not a poet.
The police and the rioters were arranged in two ragged fronts that ran across a dozen streets, the opposing sides illuminated by the flash of newsmen’s cameras and the burning, petrol-filled milk bottles sent tumbling across the no man’s land like votive offerings to the god of curves.
Sometimes one side charged and the two lines touched for a time before decoupling and returning to their original positions.
The smell was the stench of civilization: gunpowder, cordite, slow match, kerosene.
It was perfect.
It was Giselle.
It was Swan Lake.
And yet…
And yet we had the feeling that we had seen better.
