Andrea Carter (2)

The sixth book in a beloved series. Ben has two mysteries to solve in this instalment. A stranger has moved in with her parents and Ben is convinced he is swindling them. And an author dies suddenly at the local book festival and it looks like murder.

Inishowen is a real place and I love how the author brings it alive with vivid descriptions of the landscape. The little towns like Malin and Moville are all very recognisable and I love guessing which local people some of the characters might be based on. The quirky characters are true to life and bring a lot of heart to the series.

The Inishowen Mysteries have a gentler pace than some mystery thrillers but I think it reflects very well the pace of life we have here in the peninsula.

I was particularly happy to see Moville and the Moville Shore Walk appear in this book as it's such a gorgeous place and close to my heart.

I loved the storyline with Ben's parents and I was as excited for them to love Inishowen as much as Ben does. It's so scary to think about how vulnerable the older generation are to con artists and scams and I was glad that Ben had Molloy on hand to help her investigate the man at her parent's house.

The death of the author was also an interesting puzzle to solve as it was riddled with red herrings, secrets and lies.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The series goes from strength to strength but it is advisable to start at book one as there are recurring characters and story arc involving Ben's background.

Death Writes has left me with the question; what happens next for Ben and Mollloy's relationship? Will Ben's parents feature more in the series? I hope they do.… (meer)

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fourth in the series is a dangerous passage for a writer. The temptation is to let things get samey, or to overcomplicate things; seldom does one find the writer whose abilities include knowing what makes a series work for the long haul. I think we might have a winner in Author Andrea Carter.

Ben O'Keeffe is glad that Leah, her assistant, will have the very first wedding at Greysbridge. It's a fine old landed-gentry house that Abby and Ian Grey have brought back into their family after a profligate ancestor lost in a card game! What they needed was an event, and a locally beloved soul's wedding is perfect. Until, of course, it isn't...there are disasters piling up on the day, and the deaths of two seemingly unconnected men from different countries occur in such close time and physical proximity that the Garda gets involved.

Which means Ben's ex, Tom Molloy, returns to Inishowen. Which means her casual thing developing with new-to-Glendara Harry Dubois, the new G.P., is suddenly complicated. Which means that Ben's nosy neighbors will quickly be weighing in on which path she should choose...Phyllis the bookstore owner (who's also now a Reverend of some sect or another) and Iain the estate agent aren't likely not to share their ideas with her. Not to mention bestie/vet Maeve. Wouldn't be at all surprised if Guinness the cat doesn't weigh in soon.

What happens next is a bolt from the blue regarding her clients, the Greys...there are more secrets than just the ones we were made privy to in the last installment! And they get...intense. Add to the ordinary parent/child tensions within the Grey family the unusual way their son came to them, then top that off with a revelation or two about their business lives...that's enough for a book, but not for this book.

While the Greys are stewing, and their adopted son running, the issues surrounding the deaths of two people who are apparent strangers to each other are coming together with the odd little island community off Malin Head and directly across the North Atlantic from Greysbridge. There are so many things swirling in the waters between the locales that it becomes a bit wearing to keep track of them. And there are threads that get dropped...Harry Dubois vanishes early and reappears in Ben's thoughts and the investigation barely often enough to keep the name from requiring a bit of flipping to recall...but in the end, his presence and involvement are such worthwhile additions to the story that I'm inclined to be forgiving.

The problems I had with this read were mostly around the pace of the story. When Author Carter put all these pieces together, I think she underestimated how complex machinery needs time to spool up and find equilibrium. In this case, that meant a lot of scene-setting that wouldn't obviously pay off until later. The time we spend following Ben and Maeve around, then Ben and Tom around, is not badly spent. You won't necessarily think that as it happens, but I encourage you to sit with the situations you're seeing and let the slow accretion of facts do their work. Remember the way you learned to solve puzzles as a kid? One piece fits with another, then another after that, and finally there's a whole new pattern at the end. This story's about the best illustration of that truth as any I've read this year.

I don't know much about the Irish relationship to the UK's corner of it, or of Ireland's interest in Scottish independence, but they're clearly coming to a head as Brexit squashes the livelihoods of people too poor to matter to the Tories. And it's not really a surprise that the primary beneficiaries of the situation will be organized criminals, is it.

The actual solutions to all the crimes are plausible, and are just going to keep the local criminal classes thoroughly on the hop, so they're working to our advantage. While these books really can be read as stand-alones, since we're given more than enough information to follow along with who's who and what's what, I don't recommend it. I skipped (inadvertently) book two, Treacherous Strand, and after the spoilers for it in book three felt there was no need to or profit in my urge to go back. We have another year to wait for book five, The Body Falls, to come out.

Why does a year sound like such a long time....… (meer)

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I don't know how the heck I didn't get book two of this series! I thought I had it and it wasn't until I was writing these reviews that I realized it wasn't here. Quite peeved with myself for being so careless...there are things that happened in book two, Treacherous Strand, that form the basis of the mystery in this entry. Author Carter quite competently fills me in, I'm not left wondering what the devil's up or why, but I'd've enjoyed getting here the old-fashioned way.

Don't make my mistake! But let it be said that I'm not in any way feeling deprived in my enjoyment of this book's plot, characters, or action.

The story isn't a straight-forward one: there are threads that tie things together that we aren't so much tipped to, but whose...wrongness...is a clear indicator that your inner sleuth should be engaged in this read at all times. The relationships among the good burghers of Glendara are not the uncomplicated "rural places are full of the salt of the earth charming lovely folk" types. There's adultery, but ya know what that's no biggie; there's bigamy, and that IS a biggie; then there's bastardy, and this ancient uncrime becomes the weight on the loom of Disaster's tapestry.

As is expected, too, the law-enforcement officer and the sleuth are challenged as a couple. Their own trust issues, springing from different places but with similar power, are foregrounded by every development in the several awful, violent crimes. It can't be helped. When each person is in a position of community trust, a couple is going to be hard put to fulfill their required roles at every turn—frequently starting from the internal question "what is my actual appropriate role right now?" No one can always get it right, and with all the best intentions, getting something catastrophically wrong is inevitable.

This does not in any way mean that I wasn't shouting "ARE YOU MENTAL DO NOT DO THAT" at my Kindle on multiple occasions. I honestly wanted to find the place on the map, book a flight, and go hand out some ass-chewings. Luckily for me I can tell you Author Carter really did make these places up.

While there's no story without some characters (plural) making bad decisions, the sheer obliviousness to the stakes of inaction that each and every one of them demonstrated at various times frightened me. Decisions to act in foolish ways are always easier to fix than failures to act in appropriate and timely ways. "Least said soonest mended" is NOT THE WAY FORWARD with criminals. Worrying about someone's feelings when there is a murderer in the vicinity is stupid. Blurt it out, fix it later! And even if you can't *at least they're alive*!

There are people no longer alive at the end of this book but, in the approved fashion for cozies, they are not people I myownself mind being dead. Not one little bit. Though, to be honest, the conclusion of this entry in the series does not include a vital piece of confirmation that suspicious ol' series-mystery consumer me seriously feels the lack of. The story is one of those that contains a credible motive for the resolution by discussion, but this feature could easily become a bug if it takes place every book.

What I'll delight in seeing more of is the way the community of Glendara continues to be willing and able to face down its dissension, hurts, and divisions. What I'll anticipate...not for much longer, Oceanview Publishing brings out Murder at Greysbridge on the second of November!...is learning how the huge sea-change, the La-Palma-landslide tsunami-level surprise plays out in this modern-world-problems involving series. I'm always happiest when reading books that don't cocoon the characters away from reality without reasonable care being taken to explain why they should be. I'm extra happy that Author Carter decided not to do that at all in this series.

Yes, I wish I'd read book two before this and am annoyed with myself that I carelessly failed to check the series list before starting this one. No, I'm not at all saddened by the way I was brought up to speed. And most of all, I'm so happy I got to read Andrea Carter's Inishowen series. Seek it out in paper, download a digital copy, read them in order!, but definitely read them soon.… (meer)