The great variety and number of Irish Crime Fiction novels published since the start of 2016 continues for April and May!!
ALL THINGS NICE by Sheila Bugler (April 4th)
Charlotte Gleeson is living the life she always dreamed of, but it's nothing like she imagined. Her daughter hates her, her husband is having an affair, her drinking is out of control. And now she’s the prime suspect in a murder investigation …For DI Ellen Kelly, this is her first big investigation in eight months – since she let a serial killer get away. There’s an awful lot riding on a good result, which means keeping up the pressure on Charlotte Gleeson and her messed-up family.As Ellen investigates, it becomes clear the Gleesons are harbouring some dangerous secrets. The more she digs, the more she uncovers … and the closer she comes to a deadly confrontation.
A TIME OF TORMENT by John Connolly (April 7th)
Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart. He was imprisoned, brutalized.But in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death but was saved, of the ones who tormented him, and an entity that hides in a ruined stockade. Parker is not like other men. He died, and was reborn. He is ready to wage war. Now he will descend upon a strange, isolated community called the Cut, and face down a force of men who rule by terror, intimidation, and murder. All in the name of the being they serve.
THE CITY IN DARKNESS by Michael Russell (May 5th)
Christmas 1939. In Europe the Phoney War hides carnage to come. In Ireland Detective Inspector Stefan Gillespie keeps tabs on Irishmen joining the British Forces. It's unpleasant work, but when an IRA raid on a military arsenal sends Garda Special Branch in search of guns and explosives, Stefan is soon convinced his boss, Superintendent Terry Gregory, is working for the IRA. At home for Christmas, Stefan is abruptly called to Laragh, an isolated mountain town. A postman has disappeared, believed killed, and Laragh's Guards are hiding something. Stefan is the nearest Special Branch detective, yet is he only there because Gregory wants him out of the way? Laragh is close to the lake where Stefan's wife Maeve drowned years earlier, and when events expose a connection between the missing postman and her death, Stefan realises it wasn't an accident, but murder. And it will be a difficult, dangerous journey where Stefan has to finally confront the ghosts of the past not only in the mountains of Wicklow, but in Spain in the aftermath of its bloody Civil War, before he can return to Dublin to find the truth.
DISTRESS SIGNALS by Catherine Ryan Howard (May 5th)
Did she leave, or was she taken? The day Adam Dunne's girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads 'I'm sorry - S' sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her. Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate - and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before. To get the answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground...
THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER by Vanessa Ronan (May 5th)
After ten years in the Huntsville State Penitentiary, Jasper Curtis returns home to live with his sister and her two daughters. Lizzie does not know who she's letting into her home: the brother she grew up loving or the monster he became. Teenage Katie distrusts this strange man in their home but eleven-year-old Joanne is just intrigued by her new uncle. Jasper says he's all done with trouble, but in a forgotten prairie town that knows no forgiveness, it does not take long for trouble to arrive at their door ...
LITTLE BONES by Sam Blake (May 17th)
Little Bones introduces Cathy Connolly, a bright young heroine set to take the world of crime fiction by storm. Attending what seems to be a routine break-in, troubled Detective Garda Cathy Connolly makes a grisly discovery: an old wedding dress - and, concealed in its hem, a baby's bones. And then the dress's original owner, Lavinia Grant, is found dead in a Dublin suburb. Searching for answers, Cathy is drawn deep into a complex web of secrets and lies spun by three generations of women. Meanwhile, a fugitive killer has already left two dead in execution style killings across the Atlantic - and now he's in Dublin with old scores to settle. Will the team track him down before he kills again? Struggling with her own secrets, Cathy doesn't know dangerous - and personal - this case is about to become...'
THE PLEA by Steve Cavanagh (May 19th)
For years, major New York law firm Harland & Sinton has operated a massive global fraud. When a client of the firm, David Child, is arrested for murder, the FBI ask con-artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn to secure Child as his client and force him to testify against the firm. Eddie's not a man to be coerced into representing a guilty client, but the FBI have incriminating files on Eddie's wife, and if Eddie won't play ball, she'll pay the price.
