Deadly Diamonds

July 22, 2013
Walking stereotypes mar the promising premise of Dobbyn’s plot-driven fourth thriller featuring Boston lawyer Michael Knight (after 2012’s Black Diamond), in which mobsters from both the Italian and the Irish mafias, along with some members of the IRA, combat one another over influence and diamonds. When the boss of the Irish mafia comes to Knight for legal advice after finding a dead body in a car that his son stole, Knight believes that it’s more than a case of simple joyriding. But neither he nor his partner, Lex Devlin, suspects that the schemes are of international proportions. Too many players clutter the fast-paced drama, which stretches from Boston’s North End and South End to Ireland and to Sierra Leone, where slaves toil in the mud under the watch of brutal masters, who care only for the diamonds they extract. Only with the introduction of the escaped slave Bantu does the novel feel grounded in real people instead of tropes.