PUBLISHED BY CONSTABLE 2020
April in Florida and Ben O’Keeffe is enjoying balmy temperatures, working the last few days of a six-month stint with her old law firm. A week later she returns to Glendara, Inishowen where a charity cycle race is taking place. But it starts to rain, causing the cyclists to postpone the start of their event and stay overnight in the town. But the rain doesn’t stop; it increases to become relentless, torrential.
In the middle of the night, Sergeant Tom Molloy is called out to Mamore Gap, where a body, dislodged from a high bank by the heavy rain, has fallen onto the vet’s jeep. It is identified as Bob Jameson, a well-known local charities boss, and the organiser of the cycling event. Stunned, the GP confirms that the man has suffered a snakebite.
Terrible weather persists and soon bridges are down and roads are impassable. Glendara is completely cut off, with a killer at the heart of the community. Who is responsible for Bob Jameson’s death? One of the strangers in town or someone closer to home? It’s left to Molloy, with Ben’s assistance, to find out what is going on.
Andrea Carter grew up in Laois and studied law at Trinity College Dublin, before moving to the Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal where she ran the most northerly solicitors’ practice in the country. In 2006 she returned to Dublin to work as a barrister before turning to writing crime novels.
Carter is the author of the Inishowen Mysteries, most recently The Well of Ice and Murder at Greysbridge. Her books are published by Little, Brown in the UK, Goldmann Verlag in Germany, Oceanview in the US and will be adapted for television next summer.
The Sunday Times has said ‘Carter excels in re-creating the cloistered, gossipy confines of a small Irish village…the Inishowen peninsula community where everybody knows everybody else’s business is a fine stand-in for the mannered drawing room society of a Christie mystery.’
This keeps you guessing until the end so I really enjoyed it, each page kept you engrossed in what was going on and who was to blame. The characters worked really well with the story and the solicitor voicing her thoughts blended in really well.