The Rookie and The Thief: Collected Stories 2010-2021

Retired paramilitary-turned-attempted-statesman Harry ‘the Hurler’ Hurley knows the North’s new politics will never work until they sort out the police and the judiciary first.
But his Derry heartland is still reluctant to trust the old enemies. So he engages two of his brightest young stars, convinces one to join the PSNI and makes the other a lawyer.
The only problem is the would-be cop is an inveterate gambler, while the soon-to-be judge is an incurable thief. And before long they’re on a collision course that not even Harry with all his buried ammo can prevent.
Packed with the edgy comedy, murder and mayhem which has graced Garbhan Downey’s previous works of fiction, The Rookie and The Thief casts a satirical eye over the North’s never-quite-successful attempts to heal itself.
From the author of the critically-acclaimed short story collection Off Broadway: ‘A master stylist, dammit, you can almost taste the steam off the pages.’ (Modern Woman) The Rookie and The Thief is in three parts.

* The main section of the book consists of a collection of twelve interwoven short stories, focusing on the trials and triumphs of the young Derry power couple, one the rising police officer the other the lawyer (The Rookie and The Thief).
That’s followed by a standalone novelette, Letters from Dublin, (written in 2010 as a postscript to the novel The American Envoy). And the book finishes with The Christmas Present, a limited-edition novella first published in 2016.