In this book a female police detective in Buffalo, New York is the first on the scene of a grisly murder that becomes the start of an awful nightmare. She finds herself investigating multiple murders in a tight Irish immigrant community that seems too scared to talk to her, as much as it also is concerned about protecting its own people. The IRA is of course implicated in some form or another, and there is a bit of an unexpected twist at the end. Unexpected is a nice way of saying that the information one would need to guess about the surprise resolution is never provided until the last chapter or so, with so little foreshadowing as to make the ending too abrupt and not well integrated with the rest of the story.
I was not so impressed with the way the big baddie was not really even hinted at until the end of the book- it is pretty easy to be sure that your readers won't guess who is killing people if the killer is never mentioned as even existing until the very end when he suddenly is discovered to exist at the same time as he is identified as the killer. The rest of the story though, with killing off lead suspects in a process of elimination as the book progresses, worked well enough. ( )

This is maybe a bit better than average, but not quite up to 4 stars. There were a few holes to the mystery, but overall it kept my attention and entertained me. I'll definitely read the next book.


There was a line near the end kinda linking a particular terrible crime to homosexuals specifically, and it probably wasn't meant to throw shade, but it was also just so unnecessary to mention orientation there to begin with. They're describing the tortures a young man held in captivity endured, listing the maimings and harsh conditions, and then they add that 'some of his captors may have been gay and might have raped him as well'. Like high sexual attraction is mandatory for rape. Rape is about power and punishment mixed with opportunity. I assure the author that there are plenty of straight male rapists who wouldn't quibble for a moment about gender, age, attractiveness, or anything else if given access to someone vulnerable. The line should have just been 'he may have been raped as well' and left there. ( )

Read on iPhone/Libby

Pretty good, just entertainment.

From Goodreads:

In this explosive debut thriller by the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Blue Water, a brilliant homicide detective returns home, where she confronts a city’s dark demons and her own past while pursuing a brutal serial killer on a vengeful rampage.

Absalom “Abbie” Kearney grew up an outsider in her own hometown. Even being the adopted daughter of a revered cop couldn’t keep Abbie’s troubled past from making her a misfit in the working-class Irish American enclave of South Buffalo. And now, despite a Harvard degree and a police detective’s badge, she still struggles to earn the respect and trust of those she’s sworn to protect. But all that may change, once the killing starts.

When Jimmy Ryan’s mangled corpse is found in a local church basement, this sadistic sacrilege sends a bone-deep chill through the winter-whipped city. It also seems to send a message—one that Abbie believes only the fiercely secretive citizens of the neighborhood known as “the County” understand. But in a town ruled by an old-world code of silence and secrecy, her search for answers is stonewalled at every turn, even by fellow cops. Only when Abbie finds a lead at the Gaelic Club, where war stories, gossip, and confidences flow as freely as the drink, do tongues begin to wag—with desperate warnings and dire threats. And when the killer’s mysterious calling card appears on her own doorstep, the hunt takes a shocking twist into her own family’s past. As the grisly murders and grim revelations multiply, Abbie wages a chilling battle of wits with a maniac who sees into her soul, and she swears to expose the County’s hidden history—one bloody body at a time. ( )

In this book a female police detective in Buffalo, New York is the first on the scene of a grisly murder that becomes the start of an awful nightmare. She finds herself investigating multiple murders in a tight Irish immigrant community that seems too scared to talk to her, as much as it also is concerned about protecting its own people. The IRA is of course implicated in some form or another, and there is a bit of an unexpected twist at the end. Unexpected is a nice way of saying that the information one would need to guess about the surprise resolution is never provided until the last chapter or so, with so little foreshadowing as to make the ending too abrupt and not well integrated with the rest of the story.
I was not so impressed with the way the big baddie was not really even hinted at until the end of the book- it is pretty easy to be sure that your readers won't guess who is killing people if the killer is never mentioned as even existing until the very end when he suddenly is discovered to exist at the same time as he is identified as the killer. The rest of the story though, with killing off lead suspects in a process of elimination as the book progresses, worked well enough. ( )

The reason I took so long to read this book is I was listening to it in my Mustang and I haven't driven it too much this summer! ( )