Carlene O’Connor‘s Murder in an Irish Churchyard has been on my bookshelf for several years. I’m fairly sure I won it at some point. However, this is the year I am clearing physical books from those shelves, starting with mass-market paperbacks. So, it finally got some attention.
After joining the police force of her small Irish village, a local woman must investigate the murder of a stranger in this cozy mystery novel.
After solving two murders in the County Cork village of Kilbane, Siobhán O’Sullivan has accepted her calling and decided to join the Garda Síochána. The O’Sullivan clan couldn’t be prouder, but there’s no time to celebrate as she’s already on another case, summoned by the local priest who just found a dead man in the St. Mary’s graveyard—aboveground.
He’s a stranger, but the priest has heard talk of an American tourist in town, searching for his Irish ancestor. As Siobhán begins to dig for a motive among the gnarled roots of the victim’s family tree, she will need to stay two steps ahead of the killer or end up with more than one foot in the grave.
I picked this up without having read the previous books in the series and was able to follow along without issue. I liked the main character, Siobhán, quite a lot. She’s smart and gutsy. However, I also think she felt a little young and naive, given her age in the book. There are some interesting side characters, though none get much page time, and the reader doesn’t get to know them well. The love interest, however, was bland and underwhelming; both he as a character and the romantic subplot. There had been a breakup and two years of no contact that made little sense, and by the end of the book, the reader is left with no real closure. The mystery was fun, though fairly easy to guess. All in all, I don’t read many murder mysteries, as it’s not a favored genre. But I’d come back for another Irish Village Mystery.
Other reviews:
Review: Murder in an Irish Churchyard (An Irish Village Mystery book 3) by Carlene O’Connor