Barbara’s rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
Series: County Kerry Mystery #2
Publication Date: 10/24/23
Period: Contemporary Ireland
Number of Pages: 320

I love this author’s Irish Village Mysteries series because the characters are fun and interesting and the mysteries are not dark and brooding though they include murder. So, of course, I wanted to try this series as well. I read the first book and rated it well because the characters were certainly unique and though the story was on the dark side, I cut it some slack because of setting up the series, character backstories, etc. However, this second book is even darker and more brooding and the main character’s personality quirks just got to be annoying rather than endearing. It just seemed to drag in some spots and I found myself skimming over the slower and more plodding parts. I do like that the main characters are older – maybe in their forties.

After the last case, Inspector Cormac O’Brien has been permanently transferred to the lovely town of Dingle and is hoping to spend some quality time with his mother before she passes. That, of course, is a pipedream when a peaceful old man is deliberately run down on a country road. To make things even worse, a few days later the body of a beautiful young woman is found tied to a tree – with her hand chopped off. Cormac has done a very stupid thing and must recuse himself from running the case – but he can’t turn loose and let it go. Officially, the person in charge is Sergeant Barbara Neely, but Cormac is right in the middle of it.

Veterinarian Dimpna Wilde has her hands full running her father’s (now her) veterinary practice as well as assuring her father, who is in the advanced stages of dementia, gets the care he needs. Add a wayward son and a wild-child mother into the mix and she probably can’t handle much more. So, the last thing Dimpna needs is to find the body of a young woman tied to a tree.

Cormac, Neely, and the rest of their crew work through clue after clue after clue – and they all seem to point to different people – but mostly they point to the girl’s friends. With Dimpna adding more clues to the ones gathered by the guards, can they solve the murders before another one happens?

Yapping dogs, screeching parrots, and raging bulls all play a role in the very animal-oriented book(series). If you follow the animals, you’ll find the madman – and none too soon because he already has his list of other targets.

I wanted to really love Dimpna and Cormac, but I just couldn’t get there. I made allowances in the first book because of getting the series set up, but I actually liked them both better in the first book than I did in this one. I don’t think I’ll read the next book, but maybe I’ll try one further down the line to see how the characters have progressed. So, while it was a good mystery, I thought it was a bit slow and plodding and didn’t care for the main characters.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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