Welcome back Cormac Reilly: ‘The Unquiet Grave’ by Dervla McTiernan
Have you heard of the Irish bog bodies? Gruesome topic, I know, but fascinating in its own way. The peat bogs occasionally reveal bodies of people who have died long ago, corpses preserved in the special environment in which they fell. Some of them thousands of years old, bearing signs of strange ritual torture or sacrificial customs from long ago.
This is the setting of the opening scene of Irish-Australian Dervla McTiernan’s new mystery novel. A body is discovered in a Galway bog. There are ritualistic mutilations on the body, just like those from ancient times. But on closer inspection it is not an historic corpse, but the body of the local teacher, a man who went missing two years earlier.
The investigation is led by Cormac Reilly, a welcome return to the pages after some stand-alone works by McTiernan set in the US (What Happened to Nina? and The Murder Rule) I’ve read those novels and they are good, but I do think her books set in Ireland are the stronger for the brilliant settings and the fully fleshed out characters who inhabit them, Cormac in particular.
He is a good detective with a strong moral compass which in earlier books has led him into difficulties with colleagues and ‘the system’ and in this novel he confronts new dilemmas. Not least of which is being asked by his ex-partner Emma to help her find her missing husband Finn, who has disappeared while on a work trip in Paris. It’s a distraction that Cormac really doesn’t need but he is a generous man and still genuinely cares about Emma and so he becomes involved, against his better judgement.
Complicating matters further are other new murder cases to solve, possibly connected to the first, possibly ‘copycat’ cases, possibly completely coincidental. It’s up to Cormac and his team to figure out if there are connections or – worst case scenario – a serial killer at large.
The cases are eventually solved but for Cormac and his partner Peter, the moral questions to do with the application of the law and justice are then front and centre. Does arresting the person who commits a crime really serve justice in this case?
As in the best crime and mystery fiction, this novel leaves you with much to think about even after the case is solved and the last page turned.
The Unquiet Grave is published by HarperCollins in April 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Deep questions: ‘What Happened to Nina?’ by Dervla McTiernan
Irish-born Australian author Dervla McTiernan writes gripping crime fiction with well drawn characters and vivid settings. What Happened to Nina? is set in a snowy Vermont winter, and centres around the main character, twenty year old Nina.
The prologue tells us much of what we need to know about the story. Nina lives with her mum, stepfather and younger sister Grace. She has a boyfriend, Simon Jordan, and they both love rock climbing.
One weekend they go away to stay at Simon’s family holiday cabin to climb and spend time together. Only one of the pair returns from that weekend away.
So, what did happen to Nina?
The narrative takes the reader into the aftermath of crime: the devastation wreaked on a victim and their family, as well as on the perpetrator’s. To a certain extent, the novel keeps us guessing, as both Nina and Simon’s families have different versions of the events that played out that weekend.
In essence, it is a story of the awful acts that people can commit, and the lies they can tell to avoid responsibility. As readers we are invited to step into the shoes of the main people involved: Nina’s parents and sister, and Simon, his mother and father. How do you move on from tragedy? How can justice be best served? What lengths would a parent go to, to protect their child?
It also touches on the power of social media to work both for and against victims of crime and their loved ones.
It’s the kind of crime fiction I enjoy, raising deep questions about human behaviour and asking the reader to reflect on those questions. I found it compelling, the characters believable and in some respects, the events all too familiar.
What Happened to Nina? is published by HarperCollins in March 2024.
My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.
A twisty tale: ‘The Murder Rule’ by Dervla McTiernan
Dervla McTiernan (Irish-born Australian crime writer) has published a critically acclaimed and award winning series of novels featuring Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly, set in Ireland. The Murder Rule is her latest, much-anticipated new book, this time a stand-alone and set in the United States.
I am a big fan of the earlier novels and I especially loved the character portrayal and development, and the sense of empathy that the writer conveys within well-crafted plots.
I have to confess that while reading The Murder Rule, I found myself missing the vivid sense of ‘Irishness’ of those earlier settings and characters. There is something about the Irish voice, and the misty (sometimes dark) landscape, that lends itself so well to crime fiction. If you are, like me, also a fan of Tana French’s ‘Dublin Murder Squad’ series, I am sure you will agree.
Having said that, The Murder Rule is, like McTiernan’s earlier novels, a well crafted story with a suitably tight plot, told with assurance and skill. The main protagonist is Hannah, a law student who applies to work at the Innocence Project. This is an organisation which works to free supposedly innocent people who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned.
From the opening pages, readers understand that Hannah is not all she appears and that her motivations for joining the Innocence Project are not what they appear to be. The question is: why? And what has driven Hannah to take this admittedly extreme approach to righting what she sees as a grievous wrong done years earlier?
The answers are given as clues within chapters alternating between Hannah’s voice and diary entries made by her mother, Laura, when she was Hannah’s age.
I found myself feeling somewhat impatient with both characters at times, however when the first plot twist came it was so unexpected I was eager to read on.
The novel deals with the subtleties of human behaviour and ideas about right and wrong:
I’m just saying that it’s about narrative, isn’t it? We, I mean people, all of us, we love a story. We want a hero. We want a bad guy. We want a beginning, a middle, and an end. And life is more complicated than that but we love it when we’re served up a story and sometimes if we don’t get it, we make it for ourselves. We believe only the facts that suit the story we like and we ignore everything else.
The Murder Rule p164Readers who enjoyed books such as Gone Girl or The Woman in the Window will, I am sure, enjoy The Murder Rule. But I do hope to see a return of McTiernan’s native Ireland in a future story.
The Murder Rule is published by HarperCollins in May 2022.
My thanks to the publishers for a copy to review.
