Review of A Savage Hunger by Claire McGowan (Headline, 2016)

Alice Morgan has seemingly been abducted from an isolated church. There is blood on the floor and a holy relic is missing. The young student had been studying at a small third level college dedicated to educating troubled students. In Alice’s case she’s an anorexic who has spent much of her time at boarding school or in a rehab clinic, sent away by her government minister father and unloving mother. Neither her fellow students or the college seems concerned about Alice’s absence and there appear few clues as to Alice’s fate. And to add to mystery she vanishes on the anniversary of the disappearance of another woman thirty two years before. The former missing person’s unit of Ballyterrin’s police force is asked to investigate, including forensic psychologist, Paula Maguire. Maguire is due to be married in a couple of weeks, but she is no fan of weddings and is obsessed with finding missing people since the disappearance of her mother when she was a teenager.  To make life interesting her former boss and lover has been drafted in by Alice’s father to help with the case. With the pressure rising at work and at home, Maguire struggles to make sense of the disappearance and to track down the missing student.

A Savage Hunger is the fourth book in the Paula Maguire series set in Northern Ireland’s borderlands. Maguire is a forensic psychologist who specializes in finding missing people. In this outing Maguire helps the PSNI try to find a young university student, Alice Morgan, who is anorexic and is studying at a small third level college dedicated to educating other troubled students. Competing for Maguire’s attention is her upcoming wedding, which she’s been dreading. To add to unease, her ex-boss and possible father to her two-year old child is flown over from London to help with the case at the request of Alice’s father, a government minister. What follows is a soap opera held together with an endless parade of plot devices, both with respect to Maguire’s person life and Alice’s disappearance. While the resultant story is okay on its terms – McGowan is clearly aiming for a soap opera – neither Maguire’s home life nor the case is particularly satisfying given all the plot devices. In addition, the running commentary from Alice is a bit of a distraction and at the start of the novel especially takes away some mystery. For me this is the weakest book in the series so far and I’m not sure if I’ll be continuing on with book five or not yet – personally, I’d like the balance of focus to shift back from Maguire’s personal life to the procedural elements and the case under investigation but given the setups for the next book that doesn't seem likely.

Review of The Silent Dead by Claire McGowan (Headline, 2015)

Five years after a bomb ripped apart a small community killing sixteen people the suspected perpetrators have been abducted.  Having been freed due to issues with the investigation few locals have sympathy for the Mayday Five, members of a republican splinter group, yet the police must treat their disappearance like any other.  Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire is part of the investigative team.  She’s still haunted by the disappearance of her mother seventeen years previously, taken from her home by men presumed to be members of the IRA.  When the first body is found the investigation steps up a gear, but tensions inside the police team are strained, locals are reluctant to help, and Paula is feeling the strain of being heavily pregnant and living alone.  All the while the pressure is rising to find the remaining abductees before summary justice is administered.

The Silent Dead explores the moral boundaries around the execution of justice after the perpetrators of an atrocity become the victims of vigilante action.  Freed on a technicality the members of the Mayday Five, responsible for a bomb explosion in which sixteen people are killed and dozens more injured, have been abducted and are being killed, phrases from their defense argument left in their mouths.  Lawfully they are entitled to the same protections and justice as everyone else, but many of the police were on duty the day of the bomb and local people, especially those who lost loved ones, have little sympathy.  While the story is set up and unfolds as a crime thriller, McGowan sympathetically explores the moral ambiguities of the case through the work of her central character Paula Maguire and two other lens: that of a local child who lost her sister in the bombing and the narrative of a non-fiction book about the bombing and subsequent trial.  Maguire is an interesting character with her own hauntings from the Troubles – the disappearance of her mother when she was a child – and a complex personal life which involves close contact with the two men who could be the father of her unborn baby, her boss and the local newspaper editor.  Despite being heavily pregnant she is determined to more than her fair share of work and wherever Maguire goes trouble follows.  While the main narrative following Maguire is compelling and gripping, the two other lenses are somewhat of a distraction. In particular the extracts from the non-fiction account adds little and is repetitive and certainly gives the impression that it would be terrible read if read in full.  There’s an inevitability to the denouement but nonetheless The Silent Dead is an interesting, absorbing fast-paced story with never a dull moment and the best in the series so far, I feel.

Review of The Dead Ground by Claire McGowan (Headline, 2014)

Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire thought that she’d left Northern Ireland for good.  But after helping solve a case in her native Ballyterrin she finds herself still attached to a specialist missing persons unit, living at home with her father, pregnant but unsure who the father is, and still wondering what happened to her mother who disappeared in 1993.  She has limited time to dwell on her own problems, however, as a new born baby has been snatched from the maternity ward of the local hospital and the doctor running a local women’s centre that provides advice to those considering travel to Britain for an abortion has disappeared.  As the team search for the pair, and battle with a local police station for control of the investigation, another baby goes missing, followed by a pregnant woman.  With the pressure mounting to solve the cases Paula becomes emotionally invested in the investigation and inevitably ends up doing more than producing a profile of the abductor.

The Dead Ground is the second book in the Paula Maguire series set in the small, fictional border town of Ballyterrin, which in my head at least is Newry.  The storytelling is much more assured than the previous outing and less melodramatic, though it has plenty of drama.  Along with a compelling main plotline, McGowan interweaves a handful of interesting subplots that add to, rather than detract from, the story.  I was hooked from the start, the book quickly becoming a page turner, given the succession of abductions and the rising tension.  In this sense the plot worked well, although as the story progressed the mystery element receded as the identity of the perpetrator and the inevitable ending became obvious though no less tense.  Paula Maguire is a strong, complex, conflicted and engaging lead character, and McGowan surrounds her with an interesting mix of characters with different backgrounds and viewpoints.  The result is a swirl of alliances and rivalries depicted through some nice interpersonal exchanges.  Indeed, I imagine most readers will want to read the next book in the series as much to keep up with Paula’s soap opera personal life as to see how she solves the next crime.  There’s also a strong sense of place and history, with the Troubles still casting a shadow over the Irish borderlands.  Overall, an engaging, page turner, with an interesting lead character and subplots.

Review of The Lost by Claire McGowan (Headline, 2013)

Paula Maguire fled to London from Ballyterrin in Northern Ireland, close to the border with the South, in her late teens.  There she trained as a forensic psychologists specialising in finding missing persons.  Twelve years after leaving, her help is requested from the local force, seeking to locate two missing teenage girls, plus her father has broken his leg.  Having fallen out with her boss yet again, Paula reluctantly accepts the secondment.  But going back to the small border town that is still carrying the scars of The Troubles is as every bit as unsettling as Paula feared.  As are the cases of the two missing girls, one the eldest daughter of a local developer and politician, the other a Traveller.  She is meant to be reviewing the files, getting a sense of the two girls, and seeing if the cases matched any previous disappearances, but headstrong and authority adverse she starts to take a more active role in the investigation, focusing on the role of a local mission group.  And when she is told to desist, she continues on regardless, throwing fresh light on the cases, but also jeopardising them and herself.  But as with most things in Ballyterrin and its recent history, nothing is quite what it seems.

There’s a lot to like about The Lost.  Paula Maguire is an engaging character with a strong personality and interesting personal history, and Ballyterrin, a fictional Irish border town, has its fill of sectarian ghosts and secrets.  The support characters are a little clichéd, but generally well realised, and the story has a nice swirl of main plot and subplots.  In particular, the contextualisation with respect to the role of the mission and the history of the treatment of young women by families and the Church is well done.  That said, the story is a little overwrought at times, veering towards melodrama (especially in the last quarter), and it’s hard to believe that Paula wouldn’t have been reined in more tightly by her police colleagues given her propensity to stray (she’s not a police officer and she’s in Northern Ireland, the most officious and rule bound police force in the UK).  Nevertheless, it’s an engaging read that I sense might be the first in a series; if so, I look forward to the next instalment.  Both Paula Maguire and the storytelling reminded me quite a bit of Elly Griffiths ‘Ruth Galloway’ series and I suspect if you like those books you’ll enjoy The Lost.