Death by Design — Vincent Banville

'I stood back for a moment to take stock. John Blaine, Six Foot Two, 2201bs, light brown hair shaved close in a crew cut, grey eyes and an old hurling scar puckering one eyebrow into a quizzical expression ... '

He's short on paying customers, his wife has had a better offer, and a major city gangster is keen to pay him a visit ... but Dublin P.I. John Blaine refuses to quit! Then wealthy heiress Mrs Walsh-Overman hires him to find her eccentric son Redmond, suspected of living rough on the backstreets of Dublin. Has Redmond, like several city tramps before him been brutally murdered .. ?

Blaine's pursuit of truth takes him down Dublin's mean streets and through the city's underbelly of vice, among the small-time losers, drunks and petty thieves, deserted wives and gangsters ...