535. The Ruin

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Joni Renee

Author:   Dervla McTiernan

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Foreign

380 pages, published July 3, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

The Ruin (Book no. 1 in the Cormac Reilly series) opens with DI Cormac Reilly discovering the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling Georgian home, dead from a drug overdose, along with her two children, Maude and Jack.  Twenty years later, Aisling Conroy’s boyfriend Jack is found dead in a freezing river and the police conclude it was suicide. A surgical resident, Aisling suspects something is not quite right, especially after Jack’s sister Maude reappears in Ireland after a 20 year absence.  When  Cormac Reilly is assigned to re-investigate Hilaria’s accidental overdose, he also comes to suspect that things are not as they seem.

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My Take

Having read and loved many books by the Irish writer Tana French, I was keen to check out Dervla McTiernan, a writer in the same vein.  I was not disappointed.  Her spot on character insights and sense of place enrich and deepen this crackling mystery.  I will continue to read her books and look forward to the second Cormac Reilly book.