Murder in an Irish Bookshop

December 15, 2020
Garda Siobh�n O'Sullivan dithers over her wedding plans and learns some important life lessons while solving two murders. Siobh�n and her fiance, DS MacDara Flannery, are eagerly anticipating the opening of a new bookshop in Kilbane when the body of book lover Margaret O'Shea is found near the shop, a long way from the Twins' Inn, where she lived. Margaret had been in declining health but still full of life, and Siobh�n's uneasy over her death. Author Deirdre Walsh is in town for the opening along with fellow authors Nessa Lamb and Lorcan Murphy and literary agent Darren Kilroy, whose client Michael O'Mara, author of a wildly popular fantasy dragon series, is rumored to be in danger because of his drinking. Siobh�n notices there's no lost love between the authors as they snipe at each other and vie to be signed by Kilroy. An event at the bookshop is combined with a surprise for Siobh�n's 29th birthday. While the lights are out, someone kills Deirdre. The obvious suspects are the other authors, who the Garda find are all hiding secrets. But the list of suspects expands when the pathologist finds that both Deirdre and Margaret were killed with arsenic placed on old wallpaper stuck under their tongues. A m�lange of clues from classic mysteries plus plenty of Irish charm produce an enjoyable read, middling for this series.

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Starred review from January 11, 2021
The opening of a bookshop in Kilbane, Ireland, is cause for celebration in O’Connor’s outstanding seventh Irish Village mystery (after 2020’s Murder at an Irish Christmas), until Kilbane’s residents learn the shop is stocking only good literature and the co-owners, Oran and Padraig McCarthy, will let in only customers who can quote James Joyce or Seamus Heaney. When elderly Margaret O’Shea is found dead near the shop, garda Siobhán O’Sullivan is sure she died of natural causes, but when Siobhán tries to speak to Oran, his behavior strikes her as odd. She later wonders whether Oran’s antipathy to any fiction he doesn’t view as literary might be connected to Margaret’s death—and to the subsequent death of Deirdre Walsh, the self-published author of a dense literary novel, who collapses during a bookshop event. Deirdre’s tree nut allergy could have been the cause, but a power outage shortly before might have provided cover for a killer. Aided by a garda trainee, Siobhán pursues a puzzling investigation full of misdirection and enlivened by the input of her five rambunctious siblings. O’Connor reinforces her place as the queen of the cozy police procedural. Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency.

January 29, 2021
Siobh�n O'Sullivan, a Garda officer in Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, is looking forward to the new bookstore opening near the bistro she and some of her five siblings run. On a spring morning just before her twenty-ninth birthday, she finds a dead body lying in front of the bookstore on its opening day. The victim is an elderly woman who had hosted a meeting of the town's book group the night before, a gathering made special, although rancorous, by the attendance of three authors competing for the services of a famed literary agent. Siobh�n; her colleague and fianc�, Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery; and a new Garda, Aretta Dabiri, work the case. A storm is raging when the bookstore finally hosts a book signing, which Siobh�n's family co-opts into a surprise birthday party. Just as Siobh�n arrives, the lights go out. In the confusion, books fall and someone trips over the body of one of the authors. The connection between the deaths leads Siobh�n, Macdara, and Aretta into the not-so-gentle world of publishing, teaching Aretta much about the close-knit town to which she has recently moved.

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