Tag Archives: ireland

gallows lane

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Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin #2) by Brian McGilloway

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Once again I’m brought back to familiar territory. Inspector Devlin is a Gardai based in Lifford just 20min down the road from where I live. The title of the book is taken from an area of Lifford that was associated with the hanging tree used for executing condemned prisoners from Lifford Gaol which sets the darker tone of this book. As a young child we were well aware of the associated ghost stories and its place in local mythology. Unlike the previous book (Borderlands) where local areas seemed a little jarring due to changes made in places and names I found this one much more familiar and less unsettling.

There are quite a few storylines running through this book. To my mind Lifford is a pretty sleepy and dull town but the author has created something very different. There’s a serial abductor of young girls who is murdering them in a frustrated rage, drug abuse, burglary and gruesome, violent murders associated with an historical robbery. Throw into the mix some good old fashioned police intimidation and corruption and there’s a lot going on. If that isn’t enough for you there’s a creepy old ex-terrorist priest floating around and Devlin is getting a bit too friendly with his attractive partner. There’s still sub plots I haven’t even touched on!

The complicated interconnecting plots is one of the negative aspects of the book. Another reviewer stated his desire to see less happening and more detail but then again maybe this is the unique style of this author and what sets him apart from others.

Some aspects of Devlin’s character I find hard to accept. He’s portrayed very much as a dedicated family man with a strong religious streak but he’s had two different relationships with female characters that don’t fit this and stoops to some illegal activity himself in this story. I find these different personas jarring and they don’t fit together. I hope this settles more as the series progresses.

The author’s depiction of women is weak also. Devlin’s partner, Caroline Williams, is strong but she eventually succumbs to the pressure of the job after being injured and it looks like she is leaving. Devlin’s wife Debbie is woefully ignored except as a bit of a nag (in fact I couldn’t even remember her name and had to look it up!) and his ex-girlfriend is depicted as a shallow, scorned lover out for revenge for being rejected in the first book.

It does need to be remembered that this is still only the second book by this author. There are three more to come featuring Inspector Devlin as well as a second series with a female police officer as the lead character.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ (3.5 in reality)

Buy on Amazon UK

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in the woods

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In The Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French

From Goodreads:

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I almost gave up on this book not long after starting. The style of the first couple of chapters kind of grated on me and I wasn’t enjoying them. However, I’m very glad I persevered as either the style changed or I became used to it. Either way I ended up really enjoying this.

I also didn’t realise that this book was made into a TV series that I watched last year (Dublin Murders). I had a nagging feeling that the story was familiar but I knew I hadn’t read the book. Eventually the penny dropped, Google confirmed it and I was happier reading the story.

*SPOILER AHEAD* This is quite a dark story, dealing as it does with disappearing children, the murder of another child and dysfunctional families. The trauma of Ryan’s own experiences, how he deals with them as well as the new case, the breakdown of his special relationship with Cassie and the eventual harm to his mental health and career do not make for easy reading. However, the author does a great job of making this all very readable.

This is the first in a series of 6 books set in a fictional murder squad within An Garda Siochana but it seems that they are all pretty much standalone. Cassie does appear in the next but this is Ryan’s only one and Cassie doesn’t feature again. This is an interesting approach.

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borderlands

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Borderlands (Inspector Devlin #1) by Brian McGilloway

From Goodreads:

The corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the Borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation: the only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl’s finger and an old photograph, left where she died.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is the author’s debut novel and is a great read. It’s set very close to me. Lifford and Strabane are 15-20min from home and it was a little bit creepy reading a murder story set like this. Some of the locations and names have been changed slightly which created a slight discomfort when reading but nothing to detract from the overall enjoyment of the book.

The storyline is very good and very well structured. I enjoyed the descriptions of complexity of how the police work right on the border and sometimes across the border. It’s nice to see a book using Northern Ireland as a location without dwelling on politics or The Troubles.

The characters were good. Inspector Devlin is the main character and I look forward to seeing how he develops. I found the female characters very badly developed (Devlin’s wife Debbie in particular was frustratingly weak) so I hope that improves as the author’s writing skills mature through the rest of the series.

The author taught in St. Columbs College, Derry for 18 years. He wrote this book in 2007. I worked there in 2001/2002 as a Science teacher and he does look familiar. I’m not sure if I’m just trying to find a connection but there’s a good chance we worked there at the same time and may even have spoken in the staff room. I’ll take it as a celebrity interaction regardless!

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the searcher

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The Searcher by Tana French

From Goodreads:

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.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The author has written a few books before this one but this is a standalone book. It’s my first time reading her stuff and over all I enjoyed it. The relationship between Cal and Trey is well done and they are excellent focal characters for the story. The supporting characters of Mart, Noleen and Lena are also good although Mart’s country shtick gets a bit irritating at times.

The storyline was a good concept with Cal being reluctantly dragged into investigating the disappearance of Trey’s brother. However, the lack of material being based in a small rural village meant that it became a bit repetitive and dragged on occasion as the author seemed to struggle to move the story forward.

This was good enough to make me want to read more by this author. She has a series based around a murder squad based in Dublin that sounds interesting.

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gun plot

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A fascinating and insightful depiction of events that surrounded the period of time in Ireland known as The Arms Crisis and the subsequent Arms Trial. It also provides history of events in Northern Ireland as relationships between the Protestant majority and Catholic minority disintegrated leading to The Troubles.

Gun Plot deals with the decisions made by the government in the Republic of Ireland to provide support to the Catholic people in Northern Ireland. There was a possibility of invasion of the North by the army of the Republic to provide protection for Catholic areas. This was eventually watered down to providing arms for the Citizen Committees to provide defence against marauding Loyalist militias acting in collusion with the police.

This importation and provision of arms was done in secret to avoid the perception of a declaration of war by the Republic of Ireland towards Britain. Not all of government or all government departments were included in the decision and some were vehemently opposed to it as it was feared that the IRA would gain access to the weapons and use them to try and overthrow the government of the Republic. The subsequent revelation of the smuggled guns led to the Arms Trial in 1971 and the eventual aquittal of all the accused. One of these was Cabinet Minister Charles (Charlie) Haughey who went on to become a very controversial politician and eventually Taoiseach.

Gun Plot is composed of a 1hr TV documentary and a 9 part podcast. It provides a detailed analysis of the events and backs it up with current interviews of family and recordings of interviews of the main characters recorded in the 90s (all the people involved have now died). It also uses recordings from the actual trial which have not been heard before and is a first for any court case in Ireland. This is crucially important as the original typed transcripts have disappeared.

This period in Irish history is crucially important to the following years but has remained shrouded in mystery as to many of the details. Modern perceptions are very different to what is portrayed in this series and RTE have done a fantastic service in bringing it out in the open.

Official RTE website

Podcast on Spotify