I loved the setting and the author weaves maby threads together seamlessly. But though I wanted to like Swallow, he's too self-serving, too callous for me to enjoy any further books with him in the lead. It's a shame, too, because otherwise this was an excellent piece of historical mystery fiction. ( )

http://www.girllostinabook.com/2015/07/review-june-of-ordinary-murders-by.html ( )

June 1887 was one of the hottest and driest on record. AJuneOfOrdinaryMurdersNo breeze. No rain. Excessive heat. The city of Dublin was abuzz with activity, preparing for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Celebration and a visit by Princes Albert Victor and George. The Dublin police force was busy making sure the city was secure, with rarely a man to spare. It was Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow of the Dublin Metropolitan Police G-Division who, on Friday, June 17, caught the murder that took place in Chapelizod Gate. a young man in his twenties along side a young boy aged approximately 8-9 years old. They were shot at close range and their faces were marred to delay identity. With no identifying papers, identification could takes weeks.

It was three days later, on Monday, June 20, that a young girl, aged approximately 20 was found under a barge in the locks in the Grand Canal. Her head was bashed in and she was virtually unrecognizable. Could the three murders be related? Having botched a previous murder investigation, Swallow needs a quick and satisfactory conclusion to these murders. But of course, he is blocked on multiple fronts.

Brady’s debut novel is one of the best mysteries I’ve read this year. A combination of murder mystery and historical novel, he provides a reasonable explanation of the political situation in Dublin at the time…many Dubliners’ dissatisfaction with the Queen, the residue of the famine 40 years previous still impacting life in Ireland, the tensions between landowner and tenant farmer.

The 1880s also brought with it the beginnings of forensic investigation. There were experiments with facial reconstruction based on facial bones and muscles. Investigative technicians were able to determine whether a specific bullet came from a specific gun based on the grooves in the bullet. And the uniqueness of fingerprints was being researched. Crime scenes must be kept pure. (An early version of CSI?) Brady brings all of these into play in A June of Ordinary Murders.

He makes the extreme heat and discomfort palpable to the readers. Readers will feel like they are alongside Swallow, his ‘book man” Mossop (think Harry Bosch’s murder book), and fellow officers. Swallow is a mystery lover’s policeman. The law is the law and it must be obeyed, but he’ll stretch the limits of the law in order to get his man (and suffer the consequences…which we may see, if there’s a sequel, which I certainly hope there is). A June of Ordinary Murders was quite the satisfying read. I highly recommend it for all mystery lovers. ( )

There are two main, non-spoilery, things missing in this book, the first is a small appendix with the current names and former names of some of the streets (for example Carslile Bridge is now O'Connell Bridge) and the second is a postscript listing some of the real and fictional people in this story.

This book has a number of interesting characters and the most interesting of which is the city it's set in, you can see them travelling through the streets of Dublin, only slightly different from today. One of the big tensions is between Irish-born and English and between Protestant and Catholic. Some of the stresses that would later become rebellion can be seen. You could also see the issues of a heatwave in a city like Dublin.

The story is set in 1887, in June. The book follows the days of the investigation of a man and child in Phoenix Park, Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow is the investigator and as he investigates things it gets murkier as he goes. Swallow has to deal with his own demons as well as political interference, some of which make it hard for him to deal. Alongside this there's a gangland war brewing due to the death of their leader Ces "Pisspot" Downes, a notorious woman with an iron hand on her followers. Just to complicate matters it's also the time of the Queen's Jubilee and Swallow's teacher student sister is caught up in some of the nationalist politics fermenting at the same time.

The author does telegraph some of the clues in the story so that I was waiting when some of the revels of what I intuited about the story to be put on the page. Then again I've read far too many mysteries and often find it's the journey not the reveal that can be the most interesting part of the story. I know Conor Brady is a former journalist and I look forward to him becoming a more practiced fiction writer, there were times when his research was thrown at the page without enough reason for the plot, though it did make me want to research more of that period in Dublin.

The story does wrap itself up nicely, giving space for future volumes with interesting enough characters set up for the future. It reads a bit like a cross between the Murdoch Mysteries and Victorian London-based crime, though Swallow is no Sherlock Holmes, even with his demons, and medical examiner friend Harry Lafeyre.

And the Ordinary murders? Political crimes were "special" everything else was "ordinary" ( )