Hard to please detective going to Cork and Kerry (5)
I believe the answer is:
picky
'hard' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are adjectives.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'please detective going to cork and kerry' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'detective' could be 'pi' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'pi' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'to' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for picky that I've seen before include "Finicky" , "Choosy" , "Fussy" , "Discriminating" , "Excessively fastidious" .)