And this is a new (7/crime novel which caught my eye due to a glowing review and interesting description somewhere.    I need breaks from the grim nonfiction and news these days and this does it for me – and I like good police procedurals with foreign settings like Ireland (or Iceland or Australia, etc.)  Besides,  the days are hot (105+) in Central California – and I’m staying in.

Prologue : –    Ireland 1993 –  Jack age 5 and Maude age 15 –  left orphans when their mother dies of a drug overdose.  Detective Cormac Reilly looks after them but Maude disappears.  –

Chapter 1 and on:     Gallway Ireland –  2013   Jack Blake age 25 was adopted and now lives with  Aisling Conroy – a surgery student.  Ashley discovers she is pregnant and  tells Jack who seems like he will get okay with it but then he is found dead –  a suicide according to the officials.

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The Ruin
by Dervla McTiernan
2018 / 400 pages
read by Aoife McMahon 10h 25m
rating:   A /crime-procedural
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Cormac is still with the police force but now assigned to a cold case task force in Gallway due to his girlfriend’s employment.

Maude shows back up for her brother’s funeral and makes friends with Aisling.  They’re interviewed and Maude makes an issue of Jack’s death.

So when it turns out that Jack is the same Jack whose mother died many years prior,  Cormac is assigned to the case – which it seems that others in the force want to keep under wraps.

There he picks up the Maura Hughes case,  a 15-year old girl who disappeared and was presumed dead.

Police procedural