Review of The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan (2019, Sphere)

DS Cormac Reilly’s girlfriend Emma works in a privately funded biochemical lab at Galway University. Late one evening she discovers a young woman dead in the car park outside the lab. The first person on the scene is Reilly, who quickly takes charge. There’s no indication that Emma was involved in the death, but he’s well aware of a previous accusation of murder and a traumatic past. After a year of working cold cases he’s just been shuffled back into rotation. He knows he should absence himself from the case, but his instinct is to try to quickly clear Emma from the inquiry and move the investigation forward. However, it’s soon clear that it might be a high profile case when the ID of Carline Darcy, granddaughter of the founder of Darcy Therapeutics, a hugely successful pharmaceutical company and the sponsor of the lab, is found on the victim. The company is highly secretive and only willing to give the bare minimum of help to the police and office politics are not aiding the investigation either. 

The Scholar, the second book in the DS Cormac Reilly series set in Galway, charts Reilly’s quest to clear his girlfriend’s name and catch the killer. It’s a relatively straightforward police procedural, with one major thread focusing on the young woman murdered outside of the lab, and a secondary thread concerned with tying up the loose ends of a father’s attempt to kill his family. The two intrigue points on the major thread are the involvement of Reilly’s girlfriend as the discoverer of the victim and initial suspect, and the link to Carline Darcy, whose grandfather owns Darcy Therapeutics, which sponsors the lab. Reilly should absent himself from the case but doesn’t, and Darcy Therapeutics is obstructionist and has the police and university management tip-toing around the case. It makes for some intrigue and tension, though the story is quite linear and in the end quite quickly and easily wrapped up with little sense of mystery. Instead, the tale seemed designed to provide a window onto Reilly, his relationship to Emma and her past, and fill out some of their backstory. That works fine to a point, especially since it is told in an engaging voice, but also makes the story a somewhat staged. Overall, a fairly decent second instalment to the series.

Review of The Rúin by Dervla McTiernan (Sphere, 2018)

As a fresh-faced guard, Cormac Reilly discovered the body of Hilaria Blake in her ruined home, apparently dead from a drugs suicide. He takes the two children, Jack and Maude, to a local hospital where the daughter disappears. Twenty years later Reilly is back in the West, having transferred to Galway to follow his university researcher partner. He arrives to a frosty reception from his new police colleagues and is assigned to cold cases. A few weeks later and Jack Blake is dead, reported as committing suicide by leaping in the Corrib river. His partner, Aisling is devastated, but accepts the guards’ explanation until Jack’s sister, Maude, turns ups, having returned from Australia. She uncovers evidence that there is more to Jack’s death than first assumed. Reilly remembers Jack and Maude from his first fatal case, but is kept from the investigation into Jack’s death. Instead, he is asked to look into their mother’s death and the possibility that Maude killed her mother. Nothing about either case is what it seems and Reilly is swimming against the police tide in his new posting.

The Rúin is Dervla McTiernan’s debut novel, a police procedural set in Galway in the West of Ireland. There’s a kind of play on words in the title, with Rúin meaning secret in Irish, and the first body and anchor to the story being found in a ruin. The story links together an old and new case: the suicide death of a mother and twenty years later, the death of her son. The lead character is Detective Inspector Cormac Reilly, who has transferred from an elite unit in Dublin to the regional city to follow his partner. Reilly connects both cases, having discovered the mother and moved to the same station investigating the son’s death. He has been marginalised in his new role however, relegated to reviewing cold cases, and shunned by his new colleagues. He knows though when something smells off and the inquiry into Jack Blake’s death is being badly handled. McTiernan does a nice job of telling the tale, with a deep sense of foreboding throughout and plenty scheming, tangled histories and station politics that does a good concealing over the many coincidences holding the plot together. I wasn’t convinced by the denouement, but the tale is nonetheless intriguing and entertaining and an assured start to a series.