Tag: Carlene O’Connor

Murder in Connemara by Carlene O’Connor

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary4 Comments

Murder in Connemara (A Home to Ireland Mystery Book 2)Murder in Connemara by Carlene O’Connor
Barbara’s rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Series: Home To Ireland Mystery #2
Publication Date: 7/27/21
Period: Contemporary Ireland
Number of Pages: 356

I thoroughly enjoy this author’s Irish Village Mystery series and was very happy to find she had started a new mystery series also based in Ireland. This time, the lead character is a transplanted American interior designer whose family roots are in the Galway area of Ireland.

Tara Meehan is anxiously awaiting her business license in order to open her architectural salvage shop, Renewals, in downtown Galway. While she’s waiting, she is getting the shop set up and preparing for her grand opening. She is absolutely beyond excited. As a top interior designer in New York, she never expected to give it all up and move to Ireland, but here she is and she loves Ireland already. She has come to love the uncle she never knew she had (Murder In Galway), and then, there is Danny O’Donnell… Danny is more than a friend, but perhaps less than a boyfriend – Tara just isn’t sure what their relationship is aside from being occasional bed partners.

Tara found a flyer, on her shop’s front door, listing an old stone cottage for sale. With all the nervous energy she’s built up awaiting her license, she decides to go check out the cottage. She is absolutely entranced with the location and the crumbling cottage – until she discovers a tiny abandoned pug named Savage, and a dead body with no identification on it. Uh-Oh – another adventure begins.

A force of nature, in the form of Veronica O’Farrell, bursts into Tara’s yet-to-open shop and demands to be able to use the shop as the venue for her ‘Amends’ party. Veronica, along with her butler/lawyer Bartley, and driver Andy totally ignore Tara and her protestations that she could NOT allow the party to take place in her shop because she couldn’t open for business without her license. Since the fee Veronica is offering is exceptional and she wants additional tasks done, Tara manages to figure out a way to accommodate Veronica without losing the commission. It won’t take long for her to be very sorry about that decision – because Veronica is soon found murdered – and the murder weapon is one Tara had posted a selfie with – and the hashtag #KillerBrooch.

The overall mystery was a good one, but there were entirely too many people and suspects involved. We kept going off on tangents and it just bogged the story down. Then, there is Tara’s attitude. I haven’t yet managed to get to like her and a lot of that is her attitude – especially about the Garda. She just goes about doing her own thing whether it interferes with their investigation or not. I don’t know – I think it is her Holier-Than-Thou attitude that just rubs me the wrong way and she seems to think the Garda are stupid. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame Danny for walking away from her because she certainly doesn’t seem to give him any consideration either.

I’m certainly on the fence about this one. Once I’d waded through all of the extraneous chaff, the underlying mystery and motivation of the murderer were compelling and interesting. The suspects – John and Sheila Murphy, Elaine Burke, Mimi Griffin, Eddie O’Farrell, Cassidy Hughes, and Iona Kelly – are on Veronica’s ‘Amends’ list, but they spend almost all of their time loudly arguing and blaming each other for the murders. All of that just slows the pace of the story and bogs it all down. None of it adds to the mystery and a lot of it just doesn’t make much sense.

I am giving the book a 3.5-star rating (rounded to 3), so I guess that boils down to a conditional recommendation. The mystery really is a good one even though it is paced too slowly and has scenes that either doesn’t move the mystery along or could easily be condensed to speed up the pace a bit. My bottom line is – I will read the next book to see if Tara (and Danny because I didn’t like him in this book) grows on me. If I don’t like her better by the end of the third book, I’ll discontinue reading the series.

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

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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.