I’ve been in murder-mystery-reading-mode for the last several months. Perhaps it’s because this genre takes me completely out of the present moment. I’ve started and stopped two other novels (kind of unusual for me, but I simply got bored). I’ve decided to go with my preferences since I choose not to write bad or lukewarm reviews. What’s the point? Authors have a hard enough time being writers; they don’t need my critique if they can’t respond. I’ll leave that to others.
The
first two novels are by old favorites, Anthony Horowitz and Louise Penny. The
third is by a newly discovered author, Dervla McTiernan.
The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
is the second in a relatively new series. The characters are an irascible,
unlikeable, disgraced, former Scotland Yard detective with genius-level skills
and a version of Horowitz himself as his somewhat bumbling sidekick. The
Horowitz character has been reluctantly enlisted as the detective’s biographer.
Good fun.
The Rule against
Murder is
Louise Penny at her best. Poetic, elegant and insightful, the novel is more
than just a murder mystery. The famous detective Armand Gamache is on his
yearly holiday with his wife when murder intrudes. A deeply dysfunctional
family is holding a family reunion that is anything but. Brilliant character
studies highlight and illuminate the human condition. Recommend.
It’s always exciting to find a new author I have yet to read. Dervla McTiernan is a wonderful addition for me to the mystery-crime-detective novel genre. Reminiscent of Tana French but unique in her own right, she proves there is definitely something about Irish writers. The Ruin deftly follows several characters as they intersect and interact over the course of twenty years. The detective, Cormac Reilly, first seen as a young, green officer, encounters a heartbreaking case of neglect, abuse and death involving two children. Twenty years later, he finds himself in the middle of an investigation involving those same, now grown children, and an old friend. Twisty, surprising and satisfying. More Cormac Reilly to come! Highly Recommend.
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