The Crime Warp

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 ...

Nosey people get shot. Well, perhaps not all the time, but certainly in the case of Benedicta ‘Ben’ O’Keeffe, an Irish solicitor, who investigates unsavoury mysteries and turns up unresolved issues from the past for her clients. Now you can probably think of several reasons why some people might want to go around shooting solicitors, but Ben is actually quite nice and helpful. She has set up a practice in small town Ireland, a place full of the motley characters you might expect in small town anywhere. Only in this case they are the inhabitants of the fictional town of Glendara on the atmospheric peninsula of Inishowen in Donegal. When an old deconsecrated church is to be redeveloped, Ben is asked to do some conveyancing. However, this will not be a straightforward sale, as during a site inspection a skeleton wrapped in a blanket turns up in the crypt. Are these the bones of Conor Devitt, a local man who had gone missing six years previously? The police side of things is hand...