Marked Off

September 14, 2015
The murder of Dublin housewife Barbara Ryan at home in broad daylight—a yellow pencil driven into her neck—propels Irish author Cameron’s workmanlike first novel. Det. Danny O’Neill spearheads the investigation, but he himself is traumatized by the unsolved murder of his wife three years earlier. O’Neill and his officers, including profiler Christine Connolly, are still digging into Ryan’s murder when a second victim, a woman from the same neighborhood, is discovered. Now O’Neill realizes that they are dealing with a serial killer, highly unusual for Dublin. The glimpses into the killer’s psyche and technique, interspersed at regular intervals, are well handled, though not groundbreaking. While the ultimate face-off between O’Neill and the killer plays out a bit too abruptly, this is a solid look into the grind of a police investigation, the community tensions that must be managed, and the struggle that the cops go through to overcome the often frustrating personalities of their colleagues while on the hunt.

Starred review from November 1, 2015

Det. Danny O'Neill is next up on the duty roster to catch a case when a local woman is brutally murdered in a Dublin suburb. After the death of his wife at the hands of a drunk driver, Danny went off the rails for a time, but he is trying to get his life back on track. Then another murder follows. VERDICT Danny is as dour as any cop in a Tana French or Stuart Neville novel, but he is working hard to recover his equilibrium and just wants to do his job. Winner of the 2014 RTE Today Show/New Island "Get Your Book Published" competition, this debut establishes a gripping plot with red herrings that contribute to the building tension. Aficionados of Celtic-flavored police procedurals should add this to their reading lists.

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