Friday, June 4, 2021

Murder in an Irish Village (An Irish Village Mystery #1)

Author:    Carlene O'Connor
Genre:     Mystery

Hardcover; Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:    9781617738449; 9781617738463
Kensington Publishing
368 Pages
$25.14; $6.99; $4.99 Amazon
January 31, 2017

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In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Naomi's Bistro has always been a warm and welcoming spot to visit with neighbors and share a cup o' tea.  But murder has a way of killing business...

Nowadays, Siobhán O'Sullivan, along with her five siblings, runs the family bistro named for their mother.  It's been a rough year for the O'Sullivans, but it's about to get rougher.  One morning, as they're opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table with a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.  With the local garda suspecting the O'Sullivans, and their business in danger of being shunned, it's up to the feisty redheaded Siobhán to solve the crime and save her beloved brood.

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Siobhán O'Sullivan is only twenty-two, but she's the head of the family now that her parents were killed in a car crash a year ago.  The crash was caused by Billy Murphy, who sits in jail.  But one morning she sees his brother in town -- a man she thought had been in Dublin ever since.  Even though she wants nothing to do with him now, he won't leave her alone.  And when she enters her family's bistro a day later, he is sitting at one of the tables with a pair of hot pink scissors in his chest.  Scissors from a local beauty salon that was given to her as a promotion.  With her brother James missing and the best suspect for the crime, Siobhán now has to find a murderer who's trying to frame someone in her family...

Since I do love another series by this same author, I was hoping to love this one, too.  Unfortunately, I didn't.  First off, we are told of a tragedy where the six childrens' parents were killed a year ago.  Tragic enough in itself, but now we have a young girl who has her even younger siblings working in a restaurant.  What kind of life is that?  And six of them?  It was difficult to keep track of who was who and how old they were.

There was no sense of place; this could have occurred in any village in Ireland.  I would have liked to have heard more about their surroundings (as we do in the other series).  I think there were just too many characters to keep track of, and it started to irritate me.  You need a cheat sheet to keep track of everything going on.

Eventually, I found out who the murderer was and why, and all I saw were six ruined lives that could have been different.  Maybe just two or three siblings would have worked better as far as the story line goes.  In the end, I can't say whether or not I will read another of these books.



More on Carlene O'Connor's Books:    https://www.fantasticfiction.com/o/carlene-oconnor/

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