Blood Sisters

December 7, 2015
Horrors abound in Masterton’s gripping fifth crime novel featuring Cork, Ireland, Det. Supt. Katie Maguire (after 2015’s Taken for Dead). First, a couple walking near Nohaval Cove spot 23 dead horses heaped on the breach at the bottom of a cliff. Meanwhile, Sister Bridget Healy, an elderly nun in a nursing home, is found slain in her bed. Another two nuns go missing. The authorities discover that Sister Bridget and the other nuns all served at Bon Sauveur Convent, formerly a home for unmarried women and their babies. Secrets and the lengths people will go to protect them are abundant, and even Katie has a secret of her own. Masterton makes no secret of the killer or the killer’s motivations as Katie and her team unearth the misdeeds perpetrated at Bon Sauveur. Despite too many subplots and an overly cute ending, this is an effective crime novel.

February 1, 2016

DS Katie Maguire's most recent case (after Taken for Dead) has her called to a nursing home in Cork, Ireland, where an elderly nun has been suffocated and violated in a particularly heinous manner. This is just the latest in a string of such attacks. How do these crimes relate to the 23 racehorses, driven over a cliff to their deaths? When a child's skull is found in the garden of the Bon Sauveur Convent, where, years ago, it had been a home for unwed mothers, more dark secrets are revealed. On the personal front, Katie faces some serious complications. VERDICT Acclaimed for his horror fiction, award winner Masterton also writes crime fiction with verve. Here his engrossing effort is full of menace and mystery. Admirers of Bartholomew Gill and Ken Bruen will want this one, but they should remember to brush up on their Irish slang.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016
In the fifth Katie Maguire mystery, the Cork, Ireland, detective superintendent has a tricky case on her hands: an elderly nun has been sexually assaulted and murdered. When another nun is found dead, it's clear someone has an agenda. Could it have anything to do with the bones of a small child that were recently found on the grounds of the convent? Katie's got her work cut out for her, but it's hard to focus on the case at hand, what with all the distractions: her corrupt former boss is accusing Katie of forcing him out of his job, she's still trying to put a notorious pimp behind bars, and she's pregnant with the child of her former (now-deceased) lover. The author has a lot of story elements to juggle here, and he expertly keeps them all in the air. Known primarily for his many horror novelshe's a superstar in that genreMasterton is also a talented mystery writer, and fans who haven't sampled the Maguire series should think about rectifying that sooner than later.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)