“Snow” by John Banville

It’s near Christmas of 1957 and heavily snowing. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford is called to County Wexford in Ireland to the ancestral home of the Osbornes, a family that has seen better times but still maintain their position, at least in their own eyes. Like Strafford, they are Protestant, the remnant of the great landed families who dominated Ireland before independence from Britain. Strafford himself is the son of a similar family in similar circumstances – and no one knows why he became a police officer, including Strafford himself. 

What it’s been called to investigate is the body of a Catholic priest, Father Tom Lawless. The man, a frequent guest, had been found in the library, stabbed to death and the body mutilated. The body and the crime scene has also been tampered with – Colonel Osborne couldn’t stand the sight of the mess and so had the housekeeper clean up the blood. It soon becomes clear that this is where the priest may have died, but he was initially stabbed upstairs.

 

Strafford not only has to investigate the gruesome death, he also must deal with his political superior in the Dublin police force, the powerful archbishop of Ireland who prefers to cover up messy crimes, even of priest, and his own inner demons. And then his subordinate police officer, helping the investigation, disappears. 

 

John Banville

Snow is the first mystery novel in the Strafford and Quirke series by Irish writer John Banville. Originally published in 2020, it received rave reviews from The Guardian in Britain and The New York Times. It was something of a departure for Banville, a Booker Prize winner who’s known more for his literary novels. 

 

That said, Snow seems more a cross between a mystery novel and a literary one. It’s less about police procedure and solving a mystery and more about the interior life of the detective investigating the crime. But it’s well done, with Banville peeling away the layers of past and present that the crime is really all about.

 

In addition to his work in literary journalism (The Irish Press and The Irish Times), Banville is the author of numerous works of fiction, including novels, short stories, and novellas. Under the pseudonym Benjamin Black and his own name, he’s also written several crime novels. His fiction has received numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.

 

Related: The Sea by John Banville.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Tanya Berry’s Work and Wisdom – Gracy Olmstead at Granola.

 

In Praise of Common Sense – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The Ancient Roman Guide to Building Your Personal Library – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

"Foster" by Claire Keegan

Irish writer Claire Keegan writes stories like Johannes Vermeer painted paintings: interior scenes, perfectly drawn, with far more going on than what first meets the eye. Whether you’re reading a Keegan novel or standing before “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” when you finish and walk away you simply say, “Yes.” 

I discovered this when I read Keegan’s Small Things Like These, the story of a coal hauler doing his regular delivery at a convent when he discovers a young girl shivering outside and discovers he has walked into something else entirely. Keegan moves comfortably into her characters’ skins, and the reader becomes almost one with the story.

 

In Keegan’s short novel Foster, a young girl doesn’t entirely understand what is happening when her father brings her to the home of an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Kinsella. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

My Ántonia, More Than a Century Later – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Ancient Wisdom: Why I Dug into My Family’s Past – Nicholas Lemann at The Free Press.

 

Why My Sons and I Take the Train – Christopher Rufo at The Free Press.

Poets and Poems: Moira Linehan and "Toward"

Moira Linehan Ounijan (1945-2023) published four collections of poetry during her lifetime: If No Moon (2007), Incarnate Grace (2015), Toward (2020), and & Company (2020). She’d been a high school English teacher and late an administrator in both technology and academia, but it was her love for poetry, and her work as a poet, that stirred her heart.  

Reading Linehan’s poems in Toward, it’s easy to see her heart stir. It’s a simple heart, and a wise heart. She sees what too often becomes apparent in old age – the beauty of the earth, the importance of the small things, and the details we tend to overlook or miss in the pell-mell rush of youth and middle age. She is a poet who’s comfortable in her skin; what she observes is not about self but about landscape, others, and time.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Christian Wiman: The poet on the need for awe – Maggie Millner at The Yale Review.

 

The Silent Traveler The art of Chiang Yee – Spitalfields Life.

 

En Route to Canaan/Jericho – poem by Katy Bowser Hutson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

"Death Writes" by Andrea Carter

Attorney Benedicta O’Keeffe’s friend Phyllis is hosting a literary festival in Glendara on the Inishowen Peninsula of Ireland. Somehow, she’s managed to lure Gavin Featherstone, the reclusive Booker Award winner, to appear and speak at the event. The author is as famous for his reclusiveness as for the first novel that won the award – a first novel never equaled by its successors.   

O’Keeffe is worried about her parents, who live in Dublin. A man they met at a grief counseling organization has managed to move into their house, and to their daughter’s eye, acts as if he owns the property. Her significant other, Sgt. Tom Molloy of the Glendara Garda, puts a word in to have the man watched and checked out. That O’Keeffe has managed to convince her parents to stay with her for a few days – and attend the festival – is temporary comfort.

 

During the event, Featherstone is paired with a short story writer for an on-stage discussion. And not long into it, he keels over and is soon pronounced dead. O’Keeffe is drawn into what becomes a murder investigation, as she represents Featherstone’s estranged wife and grown children. A second, newer will appears. And so do a long line of potential suspects, including O’Keeffe’s friend Phyllis.

 

Andrea Carter

Death Writes is the sixth of the Inishowen mysteries by Irish writer Andrea Carter. It’s a veritable Agatha Christie-like story, minus the big country house, with a host of suspects, plenty of motives, and characters who don’t like telling the police, or even their friends and attorneys, everything they know. 

 

And wending its way through the main plot is the sub-plot of the man in the home of O’Keefe’s parents. She suspects he’s mispresented himself from the beginning and is something of a grief con artist, and she won’t be far wrong.

 

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 previous 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.

 

The Well of Ice by Andrea Carter.

 

Murder at Greysbridge by Andrea Carter.

 

The Body Falls by Andrea Carter.

Some Thursday Readings

 

An Unconventional Christmas Novel (Mystery) by an Unconventional Writer – Martin Edwards at Crime Reads.

 

Nazi-looted Dutch Golden Age painting returned to Goudstikker heir – Gareth Harris at The Art Newspaper.

 

10 Crime Movies Set at New Year’s Eve – Olivia Rutigliano at Crime Reads.

Poets and Poems: Thomas Kinsella and "Last Poems"

I would like to say I read this somewhere, but I didn’t. The kinds of things, and questions, you’re interested in change as you age. When you’re a young adult, life is about, well, life – dating, marriage, family, and career, and not necessarily in that order. When you older, you discover the pleasures of an art museum, and learning what Monet was trying to say with Water Lilies and what that Hellenistic statue called Running Artemis looked like with a head and limbs; tracing the family genealogy to discover whether or not your great- or great-great-grandfather really fought in the Civil War; and discovering the joy you have with grandchildren that you never had with your own children (all the pressure if off).  

It's a natural thing, I suppose. The concerns of youth aren’t the concerns of old age.

 

I was reminded of this when I read Last Poems by the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella (1928-2021). The collection was published this year; it’s comprised of the poems of five chapbooks published between 2006 and 2011, along with a selection of new (unpublished) poems, poem fragments, and revised poems Kinsella wrote before his death in 2021. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Not taken – poem by Kathryn Lasseter at East Ridge Review.

 

The Unique Challenges of Translating The Brothers Karamazov into English – Michael Katz at Literary Hub.

 

The Value of Bespoke Worship Songs – Tim Briggs at The Rabbit Room.

 

Three Love Poems (Sonnets) – Evan Mantyk at Society of Classical Poets.

“The Shortest Day” by Colm Tóibín

Professor O’Kelly is varying his normal routine. He’s been visiting a Neolithic tomb in his native Ireland (“older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids”) for some time, but he's usually there in summer. But this year, he’s opened up a bit of time before Christmas, and he’s off to explore, take photographs, and ponder. And he’ll return to his family on Christmas Eve. He's even already done his Christmas shopping. 

His in captivated by this tomb, and he’s also captivated by a fragmented story told a few months before by a man visiting his brother in the town near the tomb. Something happens at the tomb on the shortest day of the way. So, O’Kelly is off to do his work at the tomb and find out if there’s anything to the story.

 

There’s a problem, however, and it’s one O’Kelly is unaware of. The spirits who inhabit the tomb are aware of his impending visit, and when he makes his reservation at the inn, the local townspeople are as well. And no one wants him to come. Why can’t he visit when he usually does?

 

And things will happen.

 

Colm Tóibín

The Shortest Day is a short story by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It’s a charming story, written with a dash of humor and an underlying message that’s serious. And the story of the spirits is perfectly believable. After all, this is the land of leprechauns and banshees, so why shouldn’t there be a few (or more than a few) odd spirits inhabiting a 5,00-year-old tomb (“Older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids”?

 

Tóibín (born in 1955) has published both fiction and nonfiction. His nonfiction includes The Trial of the Generals, Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border, Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, and All a Novelist Needs: Essays on Henry James. His fiction includes Brooklyn, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, The Master, Brooklyn, Mothers and Sons: Stories, and The Empty Family: Stories. His plays include Beauty in a Broken Place, The Testament of Mary, and Pale Sister. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

From Prison to Public School Mentoring – Antoine Davis at Front Porch Republic.

 

The 2023 Audubon Photography Awards – Audubon Society.

 

Two Pubs and the Jesus Hospital Estate – A London Inheritance.

 

Add title – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

"The Body Falls" by Andrea Carter

Attorney Benedicta O’Keeffe has returned to her practice in Glendara on the Inishowen Peninsula of Ireland, about as far north as you can go in the Irish Republic. She’s spent six months working in Florida; she needed a break and, perhaps most of all, she needed to consider the surprise proposal from Tom Molloy of the Irish Garda. She’s had a young lawyer subbing for her, but it’s now time to come home, resume her practice, and figure out what to do about Molloy. 

A charity cycling event is set to begin, starting in Glendara, and the town and surrounding environs are crowded with cyclists, organizers, and families. It begins to rain, which is not unusual for Inishowen, but it keeps raining. The incessant rain leads to flooding and damage to roads and bridges. The low part of Glendara takes on water as well, and soon the town is fairly isolated.

 

A good friend of O’Keeffe’s, the local veterinarian, is returning late from a call when a body lands on her windshield, falling from a bluff by the road. It had been atop the bluff only a short time; the rain had likely carried it to the edge and then on top the car. The dead man is the major organizer of the cycling event. And while it initially looks like some kind of weird accident, what can’t be explained is what the man was doing on the bluff in a rainstorm near midnight, why his wrists show signs of having been tied from a rope, and what a snake bite is doing on his hand.

 

Andrea Carter

Molloy has his hands full with the flooding and now he has a murder to investigate as well. O’Keeffe, as she tends to do, finds herself talking and counseling all of the various people connected to the man – and any of whom might be responsible for his death – his wife, his twin brother, his old girlfriend, the employee who took the fall for a failed bank, and potentially others. The victim was not a well-liked or well-loved person.

 

The Body Falls by Irish writer Andrea Carter is the fifth Inishowen mystery featuring attorney Benedicta O’Keeffe. Published in 2020, it is (so far) the last, but with a couple of loose threads that suggest a sixth may be coming. It’s a good story, with the added feature of the rain and flooding (which actually did happen in the area in 2017), but there is a considerable amount of narrative development at the end.

 

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.

 

The Well of Ice by Andrea Carter.

 

Murder at Greysbridge by Andrea Carter.

"Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan

William Furlong lives a good if not well-to-do life. He operates a coal and timber hauling business in an Irish town, providing a decent living for himself, his family, and the people who work for him. It’s now nearing Christmas, and his biggest concerns seem to be his youngest daughter’s negative response to Santa Claus and the usual rush of delivery orders that happens as the holiday approaches. 

Furlong might not have been expected to have achieved a good life and a sound family. He was born illegitimate. His mother was a maid in the big house outside town owned by a wealthy Protestant family. He never knew his father, although another man working for the family took him in hand and treated him like a son. His mother was unbelievably fortunate in not having been dismissed by her employer; instead, the matriarch seemed to go out of her way to help the woman and her baby. Which, of course, led to all kinds of rumors.

 

He's always wondered who his father was, but he’s never known for sure. But this is the mid-1980s, and DNA ancestry testing is not “a thing” yet. But as he ages, this unknown father helps feed a sense of unease and dissatisfaction, what he might consider as a minor mid-life crisis.

 

He finds himself delivering a load of coal unexpectedly early one Sunday morning to the local convent. The nuns operate the school his daughters attend, the convent itself, and a home for girls. The nun who usually meets him for the delivery isn’t there, so he finds his way behind the building to the coal storage bin, opens it, and discovers a young girl, shivering and terrified. He gets her inside to the nuns, discovering that he has stumbled into something else entirely.

 

Claire Keegan

When he’s cautioned by the nuns and people outside the convent, including his wife, not to speak of it, he finds himself growing more restless. He knows something is happening in the convent that shouldn’t be, and it’s as if the whole town, and even his wife, are part of a conspiracy of silence. But he’s reminded of the kindness of the employer to his mother and himself, and he realizes that kindness is a kind of redemption.

 

Small Things Like These by Irish writer Claire Keegan tells William Furlong’s story. The short novel, simply beautifully told, is a small window on what was then hidden but is now known as the national Irish scandal involving unwed mothers and the selling of their babies for decades. 

 

Keegan is best known for her short stories, which have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Granta, Best American Short Stories, and The Paris Review, among others. Her writing has won numerous awards and recognitions, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the William Trevor Prize, and several short story awards. She studied English and political science at Loyola University in New Orleans, received a M.S. degree in creative writing at the University of Wales, and a M.Phil degree from Trinity College Dublin. She lives in rural Ireland.

 

You don’t get the full story of the Irish baby scandal in this novel, shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, but you do get a glimpse, not unlike the glimpse that the characters in the story get. And it’s enough to know that something is very wrong with the institution that is the very heart and soul of the town. But as William’s wife tells him, “This is not our concern.” William Furlong comes to realize otherwise.

"Murder at Greysbridge" by Andrea Carter

It’s wedding time in Inishowen, the peninsula of County Donegal in Ireland. Leah, office manager and administrative assistant to attorney Benedicta (Ben) O’Keeffe, is getting married. The ceremony is set at Greysbridge, the new hotel operated by Ian and Abby Grey. It was once Ian’s family home, but the property had been gambled away by his grandfather in the 1930s. He’s realized something of a dream in buying the home and remodeling it; Leah’s wedding is the first big event held there. 

Ben is reading a poem during the wedding, so she’s spending the entire weekend there. Her romantic interest, police Sgt. Tom Molloy, has been in southern Ireland, possibly transferred permanently. His communications with her diminished and then stopped altogether. Ben has had a few dates in town with the new doctor, a cousin of Leah’s, but, so far, that’s all it’s been – a few dates.

 

She’s heard the stories of Greysbridge being haunted, and her room once belonged to Louisa Grey, who died in 1914 and is said to haunt the place. And some weird things begin to happen. Two non-wedding guests are staying at the hotel as well, an American medical student cycling through Ireland and a librarian / writer who’s keen on the house’s history and the stories of the people who lived there.

 

Andrea Carter

Shortly after the wedding ceremony, the medical student dies from what appears to be an accidental drowning. Then the body of the librarian / writer is found in his room, in what looks like death from poisoning. And who unexpectedly arrives to take charge of the investigation but Sgt. Tom Molloy, back from his sojourn in the south.

 

Murder at Greysbridge is the fourth Inishowen mystery by Irish writer Andrea Carter. It’s a strong tale of old family secrets, new family secrets, unexpected connections, and a slight bit of romance. It was going to be hard to imagine the stories without Sgt. Tom Molloy, and it was encouraging to see Carter bring him back in. 

 

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.

 

Murder at Greysbridge is another finely spun story the series featuring “the most northernly practicing attorney in the Republic of Ireland.” 

 

Related:

 

Death at Whitewater Church by Andrea Carter.

 

Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter.

 

The Well of Ice by Andrea Carter.

"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.

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

"Death at Whitewater Church" by Andrea Carter

The Inishowen Peninsula of County Donegal seems a cold, almost desolate place in the depths of winter. The northernmost extension of the Republic of Ireland, it’s most rural with some small towns. When they want a major shopping trip, residents head to the city of Derry. Dublin is a four-hour drive. 

Benedicta O’Keeffe, known as “Ben,” is an attorney. Her practice encompasses the northern part of the peninsula, and it usually involves land sales, probate, court filings, and the basic kinds of law practice. Ben is fine with that; she’s moved here to escape Dublin and the guilt she’s placed on herself for the death of her younger sister. She hasn’t seen her parents in two years. 

 

Inishowen Peninsula

She likes the people she works and lives with, especially the chief policeman, Sgt. Tom Molloy. She and Molloy seems to circle each other, trying to make up their minds if there’s something more to their relationship or not.

 

Ben accompanies a property surveyor to check a deconsecrated church property. An English couple wants to buy it and refurbish it as a holiday home. It’s known as the Whitewater Church; it served the community of Whitewater that all but disappeared in the mid-1980s with the death of the local shipping business. They’re about finished the surgery when the discover the church has a crypt. What remains there might have been were removed with the deconsecration. At the bottom of the stairs, however, they find a skeleton wrapped in a blanket. And it doesn’t belong in the crypt.

 

It might be the body of Conor DeVitt, who disappeared on his wedding day six years before, leaving a hole in his family and the community. What the discovery leads to is a decades-old story of an IRA terrorist bombing, family secrets, and the upending of other crimes both related and unrelated. And Ben finds herself at the center of all of it.

 

Andrea Carter

Death at Whitewater Church is the first of five Inishowen mysteries by Irish writer Andrea Carter. It’s so well written and so intricately plotted that at time I had to remind myself I was reading a crime novel, not a literary story. It requires  close reading to keep track of all the characters, a close reading that will be rewarded. And it’s such a good story that, immediately upon finishing it, I ordered the next four. Death at Whitewater Church is that good.

 

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.

"The Irish Inheritance" by M.J. Lee

Jayne Sinclair is a former police detective, now turned private genealogical researcher. An elderly American dying of cancer gives her what looks to be an almost impossible task: identify his birth parents. All he knows is that, when he was 4, he was adopted from a British orphanage by an American family. He has a photo of his and his adopted father at that time and a book. The child is desperately clutching the book in the photograph: The Lives of the United Irishmen. His birth certificate lists the names of his birth parents. The only problem is that his father died in World War I, six years before the elderly man was born. 

Jayne sets to work. Her husband Paul is not impressed; their marriage is foundering, and Jayne always seems more interested in work than in trying to salvage their relationship. And he’s right; she believes their marriage is dead.

 

The research task looks almost impossible, and Jayne has only eight days to complete it. Her client is dying from leukemia, and he must return to the United States. Slowly, she makes progress. And she will eventually discover something the reader knows long before she does: someone doesn’t want her to complete the research and has gone so far as to hire a hit man to take care of the problem if necessary. And then elements of the IRA get involved.

 

M.J. Lee

The Irish Inheritance is the first of seven Jayne Sinclair genealogical mysteries by British author M.J. Lee, and it’s a fast-paced, action-packed story that not only entertains but also teaches some 20^th century Irish history. Lee alternates the story between Sinclair’s investigation in 2015 with what happened during the Irish Easter Rebellion in 1916 and the uprising against British rule in the early 1920s.

 

In addition to the Jayne Sinclair mysteries, Lee has also published two other crime-related series, the Ridpath series and the Danilov series. He’s also the author of Samuel Pepys and the Stolen Diary. Writing as Martin Lee, he’s published The Fall, a historical novel about the fall of Singapore during World War II. He lives in the United Kingdom. 

 

If you like genealogy tied to a current-day mystery, The Irish Inheritance is written for you. And if you only like a good mystery story, it’s written for you as well.