The Doll's House

September 18, 2017
In Irish author Phillips’s fascinating follow-up to 2016’s Red Ribbons, Kate Pearson, a psychologist and criminal profiler for the Dublin police, teams up with Detective Inspector O’Connor to investigate the murder of well-known TV personality Keith Jenkins, whose body turned up one morning in Dublin’s Grand Canal. An eyewitness saw two men get out of a car and throw Jenkins into the water. The police autopsy concludes that Jenkins was stabbed multiple times before drowning. Kate thinks it odd that the killer or killers didn’t finish the victim off in the initial knife attack, and odder that they drove a half-dead man to a canal to drown him, leaving the body where it was easily found. Phillips uses multiple points of view to propel the narrative, most strikingly the chapters narrated by Clodagh, a middle-aged woman frightened by the huge gaps in her childhood memories. The suspense rises with Clodagh’s risky decision to go to a hypnotherapist to uncover the secrets in her past, leaving the reader to wonder how her story affects the murder investigation. This entry, winner of the Best Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award, bodes well for future installments. Agent: Ger Nichol, Book Bureau.