I really enjoyed this book. God, she just writes so well, such a gripping story, with great characters. It’d make you jealous.

At any rate, she uses the setting, a bleak and burned out husk of Ireland after the recession, well. Though perhaps, for me, anyway, I felt it was hammered home down the home stretch again and again and again. The characters are great, for the most part, and the plot devices almost Sherlockian (I couldn’t help think of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, and expected the furry invader of the Spain’s house to be a snake of some sort). For the first two thirds of the book it flew along, I was desperate to turn the pages and follow the Murder Squad’s investigation. It started to drag, a little, well… to avoid spoiling anything, about two thirds of the way through. But overall, she kept the suspense up (it could have gotten uglier than it did, and she really picked it up again for the ending).

Of the books of hers that I’ve read this one is up there with Faithful Place for me. A great read.