Irish Crime Fiction – nigeladamsbookworm

Little Bones. Patricia Gibney

For anybody that hasn’t found series of books, by Patricia Gibney, featuring DI Lottie Parker, you are missing out on one of the best Police Thriller series on the shelves.

For those of you that have, you are in for a treat with this one, I think it’s the best so far.

Lottie is called to a gruesome murder the victim has an old fashioned razor blade in her hand.

A woman receives a hand written note with three Rusty Razor Blades inside, she knows she’ll be dead within days, if not before the end of the day. Especially when she sees news of a murder on the news.

Somebody is coming for her. She knows why. She’s scared and so she should be.

Somebody is watching the Police. He wants to help, he has information, but he also suffers blackouts and doesn’t know if he’s the killer.

And all of that in the first few chapters.

Lottie and her team have their work cut out with this investigation.

You can rely on Patricia Gibney to keep it real, and this is no exception. Her books are like the written version of the real life, fly-on-the-wall, crime documentaries that follow live investigations. But her books are access all areas.

She takes you inside the head of the detectives, the criminals, the witnesses and the victims. She shows you the affect of a crime on everybody it touches, and throughout the series she has shown us the affect the work has on DI Lottie Parker and her family.

This book arrived in my inbox on a Friday morning, it went straight to the top of my to-be-read list, and was finished by Sunday, it gripped me from the first chapter. Brilliant.

Pages: 407. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now.

Who Took Eden Mulligan. Sharon Dempsey

Who took Eden Mulligan could easily be Who Is Eden Mulligan.

This is a belter of a crime novel that is so much more than just a murder investigation.

The book starts with a bloodied and injured young woman staggering into a Police Station, in Northern Ireland, and saying that “they’re all dead” and confessing to killing them before she passes out

The “them” she’s talking about are her 4 best friends and the police quickly find them all in a remote house. 3 are dead, stabbed to death and posed on a bed, the other is clinging to life.

Painted on the wall is a message. Who Took Eden Mulligan

That is where this story can take a massive turn that it couldn’t do if it was set anywhere else in the U.K.

Eden Mulligan went missing from her Belfast home during the troubles.

Since the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement most of us have forgotten what the people of the Country went through, but this book looks at the way the troubles still effect the people of Belfast and the small towns around it

Chief Inspector Danny Stowe is working on cold cases, looking at unsolved murders. When the woman staggers into the Police Station Danny is asked to lead the murder investigation, it’s his way back into Major Investigations. On the same day his best friend from University visits him, and he ropes her in to help the investigation

Dr Rose Lainey is only home for her mothers funeral. She works in England as a Criminal Psychologist and at first is loath to help, but she needs answers herself, especially when they find out who Eden Mulligan, was and when she went missing.

Mulligan was a young attractive woman bringing up her 5 children alone in Belfast whilst her husband worked in England.

Lainey was from the same area, The Markets, and her mother brought up her family alone after her husband was killed. Lainey always thought her mother was part of the paramilitaries, sneaking out at night and being secretive. Lainey had run away from home after her last college exam, away from what she saw as an overbearing mother, and had never returned until she had a phone call to say her mother had died.

Mulligans disappearance was never solved, in fact the police never really took it seriously.

This story looks at The Disappeared of Northern Ireland. People that went missing during the troubles. People taken off the streets by paramilitary snatch squads, taken across the border, tortured and killed. People who’s bodies were never found.

It looks at the effects the troubles are still having on families today, as well as the sectarian violence that was taking place till only a few years ago.

This book could not have been set anywhere else in the U.K.

I’m ashamed to say I’m old enough to know more about the troubles than I did before I started reading this book. I disappeared down a Google worm hole for hours reading about “The Disappeared”

The relationships between Lainey and her estranged family, and her friendship with Stowe, is a brilliant sub plot. In fact both the lead characters in this book have a great story to tell and hopefully there will be more to follow.

Pages: 368. Publisher: Avon. Available: August 2021

She Said. Three Said. David B. Lyons

There have been a few authors try to take us into the jury room to look at how a jury have come to a verdict. In this book Lyons explores the dynamics of the jury and the influence stronger characters can have.

At the same he gives the reader a unique look at the crime by narrating it in the first person from 4 peoples points of view

The Victim Sabrina, a young, attractive, well dressed woman who was out working when she bumped into the three defendants

The 3 defendants: Jason a soon to be retired international footballer, and his two life long best friends. Li, a nice young man of Korean decent who seems to be the voice of reason. Zachary, the mouthy arrogant one of the three.

Sabrina has accused the three of rape, a charge they all deny.

The jury have heard the evidence and discuss their thoughts on who is telling the truth about the night of the crime, and the validity of the evidence given by the 4

The reader gets to see the night unfiltered from all four of the main characters. What they said, what they did, and how the interpreted what was happening.

And that’s where the unique part comes. By letting each of the characters tell their own story, letting the night of the crime unfold, the reader is left to make their own decision about what happened.

The jury reaches their verdict, and in the very last few lines the reader finds out and and if they, along with the jury, got it right.

A clever book which deals with the jury room as well as any book I’ve ever read.

Pages: 314.

Ask No Questions. Claire Allan

One of the best books I’ve read this year.

25 years ago an eight year old girl goes missing during a Halloween night out.

3 days later 10 year old twin brothers Niall and Declan Heaney find her face down in a lake.

The families of the small Northern Irish town of Creggan are devastated and scared.

Ingrid Devlin was two years older than the missing girl and lived in the same town, now she’s a journalist who has written a couple of true crime books, so it’s natural that she is asked to do an anniversary piece on the murder, for the local paper.

What starts out as just a look at the victim, her family and the community, and how they have been affected takes a swing when James Harte, the man convicted of the murder, who was released 7 years ago, contacts Ingrid proclaiming his innocence.

The paper publishes the anniversary article, but Ingrid’s Editor refuses to run anything inflammatory from Harte. In fact the editor orders Ingrid to stop looking at the case. She decides that there is good material for a book and continues her investigation.

It’s not long before intimidating tactics start to persuade her to stop. That just makes her dig her heels in and carry on, but she’s scared, very scared, by what’s happening around her.

This book has a fantastic storyline. The tenacity of Ingrid’s investigation is underpinned by the effect it starts to have on her. How, as evidence starts to sway her thoughts away from what she has accepted as the truth since she was 10, she becomes scared.

The dynamics of the families involved in the incident, the girl’s mom and dad, the twins who found her and their parents is brilliantly written.

The tension in the book ramps up all the way until the last few pages, and in all honesty, I didn’t predict the end. Which is just how I like my crime fiction.

It wasn’t a surprise when I researched Claire Allan and found out she graduated with a Masters in Newspaper Journalism before becoming a renowned reporter in Derry. This book couldn’t have been written this well if the person writing it, hadn’t lived the life of a reporter in that area.

Did I save the best till last. This is certainly in the top 3 books I’ve read this year. So yes I think I did.

Publisher: Avon Pages: 336 Publishing date: January 2021

BROKEN SOULS Patricia Gibney

I’ve been with this series from the start and its one of the few that goes straight to the top of my to-be-read pile as soon as it becomes available.

Patricia Gibney has a wonderful talent for writing stories with multiple strands whilst keeping the character count down.

She uses the incestuous nature of criminals, and the vulnerability of victims, to make the books realistic and enthralling.

The main character is Lottie Parker, and those familiar with the series will be aware of the ups and downs of her life and the life of her family. Although the family are front and centre in most of the books, all of them can easily be read as stand-alone crime thrillers. Just as much detail is put into her team and their continuing story.

But as well as her family, and her team, the main threads of each story revolve around the crimes, and they are all brilliant.

Broken Souls starts with the discovery of a woman hanging in a bathroom, dressed in a wedding dress. Nobody thinks this is suicide but when another woman dies in similar circumstances everybody’s worst fears are confirmed.

But, there are more crimes taking place and Lottie becomes convinced that the life of a young girl is in danger.

Never one for sticking too closely to the rules Lottie goes a bit maverick in her efforts to solve the crime and locate the young girl.

In doing so will she put herself into danger.

This book is a real page turner, if I had the time it would have been a one sitting read, unfortunately things like work get in the way.

The story is addictive and fast paced. It’s not often a cup of coffee gets chance to go cold on me but I got so carried away towards the end of this book, one went stone cold.

An absolute gem of a series, and absolute gem of a book.

Pages: 446

Publisher: Bookouture

Available now

REWIND Catherine Ryan Howard

The front cover of the book has the words Play. Pause. Run. REWIND. Not just words, 4 words that conjure up a lot of possibilities in the world of crime fiction, but the more you read the book the more significant they become, not just in the story as it unfolds, but also in the way the story is narrated.

When Dublin Instagram Influencer Natalie disappears nobody is really worried. After all she had posted that she was going off line for a few days, but why did her husband, Mike, not report her missing until she had been gone for a week?

Audrey is a wannabe journalist. Actually she’s already a journalist on an online newspaper, but to her dissatisfaction she is an entertainment journalist working on the “sidebar-of-shame” looking for clickbait stories.

Her ambition is to move upstairs and work with the serious journalists on real news. So when her boss offers her a job, a bit of a crossover story, she doesn’t hesitate. The rumours of Natalie’s disappearance have started to circulate, and reports are reaching the news desk that her husband has reported her missing. Audrey is given the job of looking to see if there is more to the story than an Insta-celeb going off in a huff or looking for publicity.

What she doesn’t realise is that she is about to start a journalistic investigation which is always half a step in front of the Police. It’s just that neither, she, or the Police, know exactly what they are investigating.

Play, pause, run, REWIND is exactly how this story is narrated.

It is no spoiler to say that a murder has taken place and that somebody has caught it on a webcam, but who has been murdered, by who, and why? All these usual questions asked in a crime thriller, are laid out in the ways of the command on a video recording

Having set the scene of the murder the story rewinds to before it to set the scene, runs ahead of the murder to look at Audrey’s investigation, and pauses at all points in between.

Each chapter is set either before, during, or after the murder and is written in such a way that the end of most chapters are cliff hangers that don’t get resolved until the story returns to that piece of the timeline. There is so much suspense in this book that it is impossible to put down.

Catherine Ryan Howard is a new author to me but looking at Amazon I can see she has written two previous books, and if they are as good as this one, I have no idea how she has been off my radar.

Usually a book that jumps backwards and forwards chronologically would have me giving up on it within the first 50 or 60 pages; but REWIND had me hooked within the first 20 and kept me there all the way till the end.

2019 is turning into a stela-year for crime fiction. So far this year I have read some of the best books to be published for years. This one is right up there with the best of them.

Pages: 300

Publishers: Corvus

Publishing Date: 5^thSeptember 2019

Final Betrayal

The sixth book in the series, where has that time gone, and every bit as good as the rest.

The small Irish town of Ragmullin is again going to be devastated by murder.

When two women go out on the town together, they get separated, one of them pulls and the other can’t be bothered to wait around for her friend.

When one of the women is reported missing Lottie starts to investigate, she soon finds out that both are missing, and it’s no surprise when they are found murdered.

The killer has left a clue, or is it their signature, but what does it mean.

At same time two other things are happening. A man is released from prison after doing 10 years for a serious assault which eventually ended in his victim dying; and Lottie’s family comes under threat from within.

With Lottie concentrating on the murder of the young women, the last thing she needs is her half-brother meddling in her life, but he does, and he opens a real can of worms.

Part of the investigation see’s the Police covering old ground. A property developer is renovating the Old Courthouse. He’s not the most honest of people and has been on the peripheries of investigations in the past. Has he stepped over the line this time, or is he just a puppeteer trying to manipulate people to get his deals done.

Inevitably this book races to a thunderous end.

Patricia Gibney has a way of writing a story that has so many threads. It’s a bit like the rail tracks just outside of a main station. Lines running parallel to each other, and occasionally crossing, before they end up at the same destination.

In this case the threads cross numerous times as the different incidents, and investigations, drew close to each other and either crossed or veered off again. This made for an epic compelling story

I look forward to getting reacquainted with DI Lottie Parker every time a new book comes out, and I’m yet to be disappointed. In fact, every time one comes out, I make the same mistake of picking it up and starting, not realising I’m going to get very little done until I’ve finished it. Yes, it happened again, I read this book over two days, well I did have to stop to sleep.

This is book six in the series. Can it be read as a stand-alone, yes. Should it be read as a stand-alone, no.

If you haven’t met Lottie Parker yet start with first book and read them in order. You will get so much more out of them if you do.

Pages: 484

Publisher: Bookouture

Publication Date: 18^thApril 2019

The Quiet Hours. Michael Scanlon

Introducing a new Police Investigator, Detective Sergeant Finnegan Beck.

Newly demoted and moved from the busiest Police Station in Dublin, Beck finds himself in the small town of Cross Greg.

He is not quite what you would expect, although he’s had a bad time professionally, he still cares, even if he pretends not to.

So, when he turns up at his first crime scene, in his new town, to find a murdered woman lying out in the open with the SIO, Inspector O’Reilly, paying scant attention to procedures it rattles his cage a bit.

That is the first encounter with the old dinosaur of a detective that is O’Reilly, and things don’t get much better as the story unfolds.

He finds an ally in young Garda Claire Sanders who acts as his partner in the investigation and also covers for him when he has an occasional fall off the wagon. He’s not an alcoholic, he’s just not very good at saying no and has a low tolerance for booze.

The murdered girl is an opening into a sordid story of an underage relationship. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The small town has a criminal underworld. After all people in towns and villages have the same needs, and urges, as those in the city.

The thing is, just like every small town, everybody knows everybody else’s business.

As Beck starts to untangle the web of lies around the investigation he thinks he starts to identify a motive for the crime and is getting closer to the person who killed the girl.

His new colleagues don’t agree with him, and treat him as the Big City Idiot, but slowly they begin to see the merit in his thoughts.

It takes another death before people start to take him seriously but is it too late to stop another killing.

As the story continues we find out why Beck has been demoted and moved away from Dublin. We see him start to build a reputation in Cross Greg, but will he ever be fully accepted.

This is a great story that’s billed as being book one in the Finnegan Beck series.

Will I be reading book 2. Yes definitely.

Pages: 327

Publishers: Bookouture

Publishing Date: 8^thFebruary 2019

Tell Nobody. Patricia Gibney

Patricia Gibney has a way of hooking me from the very start of each book.

This one starts with an unknown woman running away from something or someone. She is in terrible pain and blacks out.

The story cuts to a boys football match, a final, everybody should be happy, but not everybody has a caring and loving family to support them.

Mikey Driscoll had scored the winning goal in the Cup Final, as he is on his way home he is picked up and given a lift. Two days later his body is found.

What comes next is a story that follows DI Lottie Parker and her team as they investigate Mikey’s murder. Then more bodies start to be found, and the pressure is on to find the killer.

But that is far too simplistic a description of the book.

This book doesn’t just look at the murders. Patricia Gibney looks at family dynamics, and how not everything in the family is how it seems to somebody looking in from the outside.

Latch key kids, bingo moms, single men and women bringing up families, teenage angst, unlikely friendships, all play a big part in the story.

And it’s not just the victims and criminals that are having a hard time.

Lottie, her son, two daughters and grandchild, are all living with her Mom, and its driving her crazy.

Her home had been destroyed in a fire and she is renovating her new house. But even that comes at a cost, to her and somebody close to her.

At work, her boss has it in for her, and would like nothing more than to see her fail.

The chemistry between Lottie and her DS is still bubbling along, but she is terrified to take comfort in his arms.

This series of books is great. The attention to detail that Patricia Gibney gives to the stories make them amongst the most realistic books I’ve read.

As well as the crimes in the books there is the ongoing story of Lottie, her family, and her team, and for me, that’s where she has the edge over most Crime Writers these days.

I love these books, and look forward to each new one that’s published.

This is the 5^thin the DI Lottie Parker series set in the mid-Ireland City of Ragmullin.

Although it can be read as a stand-alone novel to get the best out of it I would recommend reading the series in order. Follow Lottie her family and her team as Patricia develops and grows the characters and their relationships.

Believe me it’s worth it.

Pages: 458

Publisher: Bookouture

Publishing Date: 3rd October 2018

Available to pre order at Amazon:

Last Goodbye Arlene Hunt

Say hello to DI Eli Quinn and DS Roxy Malloy, quite possibly the best DI and Sergeant Team since Morse and Lewis.

DI Quinn, arrogant at times, works outside the lines at times, but he has a good moral compass and gets results.

DS Roxy Malloy; very often a character in a book reminds me of somebody I know, or another character from a TV series. In Roxy’s case I just kept seeing Taylor from Billions. What a great character she is. Straight as a die, stubborn, no filters, socially awkward, and determined to get to the truth. There is black and there is white, but there is no grey in her world.

At the start of the book Quinn and Malloy aren’t even on the same team, but her tenacity sees her seconded to him when she gets her teeth into a murder that may be connected to one he is investigating.

A killer is striking women in Dublin. The women are killed and staged in a romantic setting, unfortunately the men they are with ,when they are killed, are left butchered at the scene.

Quinn’s team are already investigating the first of these murders when a second murder takes place. Newly promoted to DS, Roxy and her partner are sent to the scene of another murder with a similar MO, but she isn’t as convinced as some that it’s the same murderer.

Seconded to Quinn’s team he quickly realises that Roxy is a rising star, even though she’s a little strange, and puts her to work.

Not surprisingly Roxy comes up with evidence that opens a can of worms. Her murder victim is the daughter of a mysteriously untouchable gangland boss.

From then on the investigations into the murders take a sinister twisting path through the politics of Dublin, and the clashing cultures of its previously corrupt police force and its modern cleaner counterpart.

This book is great. The new duo of Quinn and Roxy is one of those relationships that is going to have the reader wanting more and more books in the series.

As well as the characters the storyline is outstanding, and brutally realistic.

Can you tell I really enjoyed this book.

I guess the hunt for my holiday reads is over. I’ve just found Arlen Hunts back catalogue.

Pages: 294

Publishers: Bookouture

Publishing Date: 22^nd May 2018.