Category: Contemporary

Murder In Galway by Carlene O’Connor

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary, Mystery2 Comments

Murder in Galway (Home to Ireland Mystery #1)Murder in Galway by Carlene O’Connor

Series: Home to Ireland Mystery #1
Publication Date: 4/28/20
Period: Contemporary – Galway, Ireland
Number of Pages:336

I am an avid reader of this author’s Irish Village Mystery series and was very excited to see she has started this new series – also based in Ireland. I believe the author splits her year between living in Ireland and living in the United States.

Tara Meehan has come to Galway, Ireland to spread her mother’s ashes and to carry a message from her mother to Johnny Meehan, her mother’s estranged brother. Tara doesn’t even know if her uncle Johnny is alive. She’s never met him, never corresponded with him – no contact, ever. She has no idea what caused the rift between her mother and her uncle, so she has no idea what kind of reception she’ll get from him. Almost as soon as she arrived, the box containing her mother’s ashes was ripped from her hand by a street juggler and ended up opened and covering a stranger who had tried to retrieve it for her – then, directly on the heels of that, she discovered a dead body in the doorway of her uncle’s cottage. What a way to begin her stay in Galway!

Believing the body belonged to her uncle Johnny, she called the Garda (Irish police) and told them she’d found the body of Johnny Meehan. She also told others that she’d found Johnny’s body and nobody seemed surprised. Evidently, her uncle wasn’t an esteemed member of the community. When the body is officially identified, it isn’t Johnny Meehan but his best customer, Emmett Walsh, and her uncle Johnny is the suspect in the murder. With Uncle Johnny missing and the police not looking for other suspects, Tara believes it is her family duty to show that her uncle isn’t guilty – or – if he is, to help find him and turn him in.

The mystery is a good one with lots of potential suspects and victims. I was pretty sure who the culprit was almost as soon as they graced the page, but I certainly had no clue why that would be the case. There are many red herrings, many possible scenarios for the murder to have happened, and some really strange happenings going on in Johnny’s life. Tara finds yet another body, and this one had her uncle’s business card lying right there in the blood. Goodness wasn’t that convenient. The Garda doubles down on Johnny as the prime suspect and tells Tara to leave Ireland immediately – for her own safety of course. Can Tara and her uncle’s employee, Danny O’Donnell, solve the mystery before Detective Sergeant Gable finds and arrests her uncle? Danny is not a willing participant in the investigation, but he does what he can to help Tara.

This book just didn’t reach right out and pull me into the story. I didn’t care for any of the characters other than perhaps Danny. I also didn’t care for the anti-American sentiments which seemed to be espoused by the residents of Galway. I’m sure there are probably those with the anti-American sentiments in the real Galway, but I’d wager it isn’t as prevalent as the author intimated it was. With so many suspects, red-herrings, and things going on I would have thought the book would be fast-paced and suspenseful, but I actually found parts of it a bit dull.

While I wasn’t in love with this first offering, I’ll definitely try the next book in the series to see where things go. The first book in a series often isn’t the best the series has to offer because it has to fill so many functions – such as introducing us to the characters, setting up the series’s premise, etc., and providing a compelling story. If the second book is like this one, I’ll probably not follow the series, but I’m sure I’ll become a series fan if it picks up the pace.

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

The Art of Betrayal – Connie Berry

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The Art of Betrayal (Kate Hamilton Mysteries, #3)The Art of Betrayal by Connie Berry
Barbara’s rating: 4 of 5 stars

Series: Kate Hamilton Mysteries #3
Publication Date: 6/8/21
Period: Contemporary
Number of Pages: 336

Connie Berry is a new-to-me author and although I came into this series on the third book, I don’t feel as if I’ve missed anything by not having read the previous books in the series. The writing is excellent and the mystery is compelling. As you meet different characters, you begin to feel something isn’t right with them, but you don’t know what it is – and won’t until the end when all of the players – good and bad – are sorted out. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the characters and am looking forward to another visit with them in the next book.

I don’t know if Kate Hamilton, an antique dealer in the USA, had left England after the last book or not, but, if she did, she is back now. Her good friend, Ivor Tweedy, had to have both hips replaced and he couldn’t just close his shop, so Kate left her best friend Charlotte in charge of her Ohio business and planned to spend the month of May looking after Ivor’s shop. As a widow with grown children, she didn’t have family to worry about, so spending time in the small Suffolk village of Long Barston wasn’t a problem for her.

Kate is rocking along managing Ivor’s shop and expanding her relationship with Tom Mallory, a detective inspector with the local constabulary. Evidently, something that happened in one of the two previous books cost Tom a promotion to DCI and he now has to report to a real jerk. Hopefully, that jerk will go away in the next book or two and Tom can get his promotion.

Kate is at The Cabinet of Curiosities, Ivor’s antiquities shop, when a lady identifying herself as Evelyn Villiers came into the shop with a rare and very valuable Húnpíng stoneware jar found in the Han dynasty tombs of early imperial China. Then, the new client dropped an even bigger bombshell – she wanted to sell several additional pieces of Meissen pieces. Kate was a bit leery of the lady – could she have stolen the goods and was just trying to fence them through Kate?

Later, at a local festival, a woman staggers into the crowds and dies. She had been stabbed – and the lady was none other than Evelyn Villiers. Right on the heels of that, Tom is called out to a break-in at Ivor’s shop. The only thing taken was the Húnpíng jar.

The Villiers family tale is a sad one. Eighteen years ago, the husband died while stopping his headstrong teenage daughter from eloping. Then, the mother, blaming their daughter, Lucy, for the death sent her daughter off to live with an aunt. The daughter ran away after about a year and nobody has seen her since then. Does the current death really start eighteen years ago? Are the theft and the murder related? Where is Lucy?

I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery. There are plenty of hints and red herrings dropped throughout the story, and they’ll just keep you guessing. You’ll think you know – but do you really? If you love mysteries, I hope you’ll give this book a try.

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