Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter, Book Review

This is our second encounter with solicitor Benedikta O’Keeffe (Ben for short) and the people of the Inishowen Peninsula in Ireland. I enjoy familiarity with a protagonist and her surroundings and I reckon it’s this familiarity which makes crime series in general so popular. You don’t have to read yourself into a new setting, it’s already there waiting for you, like your local down the street. Imagine being a solicitor in a small place, the keeper of secrets. You know where many skeletons are hidden and you spend your working days navigating the dangerous waters of local feuds and dodgy local politics. If you have a longing for justice, which our engaging protagonist has, you will find it difficult to keep out of trouble.

I remember one of the Dragons at Harrogate Crime Festival saying that people only wanted to read crime set in London, or at a push Manchester, but that’s hogwash, and that day excellent book ideas were rejected out of hand by the Dragons’ Pen because they were not set in London. Good crime is all about people, about character and plot. People in small rural places can be just as evil as people in big cities, the problem and challenge with small places though is that you have to rub along with everyone. You can’t isolate yourself from your surroundings and escape into anonymity like you can in a large city. This adds an extra dimension to books set in rural locations and I’ve noticed from the shelves in bookshops that this kind of crime book is growing in popularity.

‘Treacherous Strand’ deals with the murder of a woman who had escaped a particularly pernicious cult in France. Why would someone in the small community of Glendara want to do away with this foreign woman who had settled among them? The problem is that whoever murdered her made it look like suicide and if it weren’t for Ben having a hunch that all was not as it seemed, no one would have investigated further. As it was, Ben had huge trouble convincing the Garda to look into this case. But with the determination of a terrier, and at great cost to her own sanity and safety, she keeps up her quest to find some justice for this lonely troubled French woman. Will Ben succeed?  

Published in paperback by Constable in 2017 (£8.99)

(Indiana Brown)