So Say the Fallen

Starred review from July 25, 2016
In Edgar-finalist Neville’s excellent sequel to 2015’s Those We Left Behind, Det. Chief Insp. Serena Flanagan of the Belfast police investigates the apparent suicide of Henry Garrick, who was bedridden while slowly and painfully recovering from a serious car accident. It seems that his wife, Roberta, and a family friend, Rev. Peter McKay, gave him his evening medication of a packet of morphine granules mixed into a tub of yogurt, but after they left, he added an additional 10 packets and died during the night. But Roberta and McKay share a dreadful secret that eats at the reverend until he can barely contain it. Flanagan, who’s trying to focus on work despite serious family problems, suspects something is not as it seems, but he has no evidence and is constrained to accept the death as a suicide. The case is officially closed, but Flanagan can’t help following the remaining loose ends until something approaching justice is done in this complex and compassionate study of the human condition. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates.

Murder by proxy and a power-mad woman in the suburbs of Belfast.There's irony in DCI Serena Flanagan's name. She lives in dread of her cancer returning, she's in mandatory therapy because of the recent death of a criminal who got away from her, and her husband still hasn't quite forgiven her for letting her work invade their home, almost fatally. Alistair wants her to give up her job to save their marriage; if she doesn't, she fears she'll lose her two children in a custody battle. But she can no more stop being a cop, and a good one, than she can give up breathing, and that's why she's not content with a preliminary finding of suicide in the death of wealthy car dealer Henry Garrick. A terrible auto accident turned him into a burned, maimed, bedridden wreck, and for months his wife, Roberta, had to tend him like a baby. Releasing himself from a miserable existence by taking morphine makes sense under the circumstances--except for two things that strike Flanagan: the odd placement of a photograph near his bed and the cheerful optimism his visiting nurse said she admired in him. Despite half-hearted support from her boss, demands from a local politician that she stop harassing Roberta, and her sense that her own husband is about to give her an ultimatum, she pushes hard to find out more. Why does Roberta seem to have no past? What part did the Rev. Peter McKay play in Garrick's supposed suicide? Why does Garrick's disgraced brother beg Flanagan to investigate the drowning death of the Garricks' little girl? You sometimes want to shake Flanagan, as you would any friend, for some of her overly zealous actions. But you care enough to want to be at her side when she has to make a painful choice between family and career.In her second case, Neville's conflicted detective (Those We Left Behind, 2015) stands to lose as much from her hotheadedness as she gains from her persistence. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from August 1, 2016
By all accounts, Henry Garrick took his own life. The wealthy car dealer had been maimed in an accident nearly six months earlier and faced a long, painful recovery. But despite agreement between medical examiner and coroner on the suicide ruling, something doesn't feel right to Belfast DCI Serena Flanagan. Garrick had a strong faith and an optimistic outlook, and Flanagan is bothered that the family photographs gathered at his bedside were turned away from him, so she focuses on Garrick's widow, Roberta, and the Reverend Peter McKay, who's comforting her. Readers soon learn how Garrick died, as Flanagan begins to turn up disquieting information about his widow. As the Garrick case takes most of her waking hours, Flanagan's home life is reaching a breaking point: her husband still suffers debilitating nightmares about their home invasion a year earlier, her children are coming to regard her as a stranger, and she is torn between work and family. The city of Belfast has been a significant presence in Neville's mysteries, but this compelling procedural is a more universal tale in which unchecked evil flourishes. Flanagan, a breast-cancer survivor undergoing counseling, is a fallible protagonist whose appeal grows with each book; don't miss her here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2016

Since her last case led to a home invasion that nearly killed her husband and terrified her children, DCI Serena Flanagan almost envies the peaceably devoted widow of a disabled businessman whose suicide she must certify. That is, until the woman's chumminess with the local reverend starts to make her suspicious. Neville, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner, won a half dozen best book and best crime novel nods for 2015's Those We Left Behind.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.