Fatal Roots

November 4, 2019
At the start of Connolly’s solid, if somewhat draggy, seventh County Cork mystery (after 2019’s The Lost Traveller), spunky American expat Maura Donovan, who has been living in Ireland for little more than a year, receives a caller at her cottage door: Ciara McCarthy, an archaeology grad student at University College Cork. Ciara wants to explore the mysterious ring forts, which date back to the early Middle Ages, on Maura’s property. Maura’s permission leads to Ciara and two fellow students doing so, but when one of the students disappears, Maura and Sean Murphy, her garda friend, begin a search. Instead of the missing student, they find a dead body buried in one of the ring forts. That it’s evidently been there a long time raises a lot of tantalizing questions. Meanwhile, Maura struggles to reconnect with her mother, who only recently reentered her life after a 20-year absence, and the half-sister she didn’t know she had. The drawn-out plot may put off newcomers, but series fans will enjoy spending time in the company of old friends. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds.

November 1, 2019
A long-buried corpse lies patiently waiting to be discovered in this slow-moving tale. After more than a year in Ireland, Boston transplant Maura Donovan is still trying to get her public house ready for serious business. Michael Sullivan, an old friend of the American grandmother who raised Maura, left her a cottage, a pub, and bits of property in the West Cork village of Leap. Although Maura's main concern is whether to serve food in the pub, she can't help being intrigued when Ciara McCarthy, a grad student in archaeology, wants to explore Maura's property for ring forts, early Middle Age monuments otherwise known as fairy circles. Although Maura's skeptical about those fairies, she allows Ciara to explore. Then Maura's mother, Helen, who's fulsomely and frequently apologetic about abandoning Maura as a child, arrives with her other daughter. While Maura's getting to know her half sister and trying to work out her tentative romance with the pub's barkeep, one of the two students working with Ciara on the fairy-ring project disappears. Joining the search for him and finally visiting one of the rings, Maura digs down and finds a skeletal hand. After she calls in the local garda, Sean Murphy, with whom she's worked on previous cases (The Lost Traveller, 2019, etc.), all he can tell her from the autopsy of the hand and the rest of the body is that it's male and 40 or 50 years old. However, two of Leap's older residents seem to know something about the corpse, and they and Maura talk about how they're going to talk about it, and then talk some more about talking, until they finally reveal all in a denouement that makes you wonder if Connolly, in her eighth County Cork installment, is running out of inspiration. Most likely to appeal to readers who love Irish settings, Irish folklore, and Irish chatter.

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December 13, 2019

After her grandmother's death, Boston expat Maura Donovan moves to County Cork, Ireland, where she learns she's inherited a cottage and a pub. Maura is settling in well, but her leisurely life is interrupted when her estranged mother and a half-sister she never knew about suddenly show up. Then, a trio of grad students arrive and ask to investigate the "fairy forts" on Maura's land. When one of the students disappears, Maura carefully investigates the ringfort and finds the body of a man who has been buried there for several decades. Readers will be disappointed in the slow-pacing (including a tedious accounting of a kitchen remodeling project), numerous apologies by Maura's mother, and the eventual account of the death of the unknown man. VERDICT The story is repetitive and drawn out, and not much happens to move it along. Only fans of Connolly's previous books, such as The Lost Traveller, will be interested enough to finish it.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2019
In this eighth County Cork mystery (after The Lost Traveller, 2019), ex-Bostonian Maura Donovan is starting to settle into her adopted rural Cork town, but trouble has a way of finding her, and this time it's in the form of unexpected visitors. Maura's mother and half-sister arrive with emotional upheaval in tow; still more unexpected are visitors from the local university who are exploring archaeological relics in the area and discover a body on Maura's land. The mystery and the look at the superstitions concerning fairy forts, overgrown planted circles of uncertain origin that are found in Ireland, prove intriguing and enjoyable, and the family story, involving Maura coming to terms with her mother's abandonment and her new sister, is also satisfying. Reading repeatedly that Maura doesn't know exactly where all the parcels of land she's inherited gets a little old, but learning lots about Irish life and enjoying the mystery make up for it. Definitely one for fans of the series, but this should also work with those enjoy gentle reads.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)