Although he had been estranged from his sister, Ida, for
twenty-odd years Raymond’s passing was to have a profound effect on her family.
His niece, Rea, it was decided would be given the house, her first. Rea’s
father, up–and-coming local politician, Graham Carlisle, sorted out all the
legal bindings and the Belfast home would be his daughters. They cleaned out
the meager furnishings of Raymond’s lonely living space except foe the back
bedroom at the top of the stairs. It was locked separately and they could not
find the key.
Rea took a crowbar to the door and forced it open. There was
just a chair behind an old desk. The desk contained a single book, an old scrap
book full of memento; photographs, hair clippings and finger nails along with a
detailed written report of each murder. With her father’s job on the line the
police could not be called in so Rea turned to a former beau, a recently
suspended police inspector, Jack Lennon, He would know what to do.
Someone else is interested in the book, specially one of the
photographs that shows the deceased and a group of men, including Carlisle in
politically compromising positions with one of the groups outlawed since the
Troubles ended, so when Rea ends up with her head bashed in, Lennon has to
assist in the official investigation headed up by a female investigator Serena
Flanagan, who has a reputation for not pandering to the type of foolishness
that gets policemen suspended.
In this barn-burner of a page turner – I read it non-stop
for eight hours – it is easy to get swept up into the short, terse dialogue and
the plot that thickens like Irish porridge. I’m hooked on Lennon now.
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