"The Well of Ice" by Andrea Carter

It’s a Christmas to remember. Shortly before the holiday, someone torches the much-loved pub in the town of Glendarra on the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal. Suspicions focus on the barmaid, who happens to be missing. And then on Christmas Day, when local barrister Benedicta O’Keeffe is out walking with her love interest, Sgt. Molloy of the local Garda, they find the barmaid’s body. The woman has been strangled. 

The arson and murder investigations seem to go nowhere. Too much is swirling around the small Irish town – the pub’s upstairs tenant having heard (and complained about) strange noises in the small hours of the morning; the victim’s husband who seemed to accept his wife’s disappearance as something norm; former residents suddenly returning from abroad; the whiff of eco-terrorism; long-buried family secrets; and the specter of the prison release of the man who killed Benedicta’s sister and was convicted of manslaughter.

 

Andrea Carter

And as she and Sgt. Molloy soon discover, people will say things to an attorney they wouldn’t say to the police. And Benedicta, known as Ben, is pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery.

 

The Well of Ice is the third Inishowen mysteries by Irish writer Andrea Carter. Carter knows well how to arrange a relatively large cast of characters, help you keep all the names straight, and cleverly weave a story that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. If I have a criticism, it’s that the story paces well until the last 30 pages, and then a lot – and I mean, a lot – happens fast and furiously.

 

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 Church, Treacherous Strand, The Well of Ice, Murder at Greysbridge, and The Body Falls.

 

Related:

 

Death at Whitewater Church by Andrea Carter.

 

Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter.