Top ‘o the morning to you! Last weekend we found ourselves downtown for a symphony performance. Afterward, we headed out to find lunch and ran into a lot of folks out to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, decked out in their green. We even sampled some green beer and my husband had corned beef & cabbage for lunch. So, how about some fiction set in Ireland for a March book rec list?
The Searcher, Tana French
I can also recommend Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. Her current series (Call Hooper books 1 & 2) are just so great. Local Irish townspeople try to decide whether a retired American cop, new in town, can be trusted. The most unlikely person steps up first.
Retired detective Cal Hooper moves to a remote village in rural Ireland. His plans are to fix up the dilapidated cottage he’s bought, to walk the mountains, to put his old police instincts to bed forever.
Then a local boy appeals to him for help. His brother is missing, and no one in the village, least of all the police, seems to care. And once again, Cal feels that restless itch.
Something is wrong in this community, and he must find out what, even if it brings trouble to his door.
The Guest List, Lucy Foley
Still one of my favorite’s by Lucy Foley. This is a locked room mystery of sorts. Wedding guests find themselves waiting out a storm on an island off the coast of Ireland.
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.
But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. And then someone turns up dead.
The Kitchen House, Kathleen Grissom
This book had me captivated right from the first page. I feel like I held my breath for the entire second half of the book as well. I first read it in 2016 and I’ve been recommending it ever since.
When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.
Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds.
The Cold, Cold Ground, Adrian McKinty
I very quickly got hooked on this series when I listened to the audio of the first book last year. Solid cases. Solid characters. If you like detective fiction with an Irish accent, you’ll like these.
Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things–and people–aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all.
Have you participated in a Read Around the World challenge? I think it’s time for me to do another one.
