Thursday, October 20, 2022

"Treacherous Strand" by Andrea Carter


Attorney Benedicta O’Keeffe, known as Ben, has put a client off for a day. The client wants a will drawn up; in fact, she seems almost desperate. Ben tells her to return the next day and they’d get it done.  

Except the client doesn’t return; her body is found washed up on a beach. Because of the tide and the way the currents run, the police know where she likely went into the water. And that’s where they find her clothes. The police, including Ben’s sometimes romantic interest Tom Molloy, say it’s suicide. Ben is not convinced. And she won’t let it go, because she feels a sense of guilt in not getting the will done when the woman wanted it.

 

Andrea Carter

The woman wasn’t well known; she’d only been in Inishowen (the most northern part of the Republic of Ireland) for a few years. Only gradually does Ben ferret out the story of her former client’s life – a daughter in Norway, a connection to a religious cult, and affairs with two local men. As Ben gets closer and closer to the truth of what happened, she doesn’t realize that she’s in an increasingly dangerous position. 

 

Treacherous Strand by Irish writer Andrea Carter is the second of the Ben O’Keeffe mysteries, and it’s a page-turner that’s difficult to put down. Carter keeps her story fast paced, with the increasing tension as it approaches a climax. Even the possibility of a romance between Ben and Molloy feeds the tension of the story. 

 

Carter studied law at Trinity College Dublin and managed the most northerly solicitor’s practice in the Republic of Ireland. In 2006, she moved to Dublin to work as a barrister and then turned to writing crime novels. She’s published five Inishowen mysteries featuring solicitor Benedicta “Ben” O’Keeffe: Death at Whitewater ChurchTreacherous StrandThe Well of IceMurder at Greysbridge, and The Body Falls.

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