The Lake by Sheena Lambert

review by Maryom

In the long dry summer of 1975, the waters of Crumm reservoir are receding ..... and as they do a body is revealed. For Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan it's just an inconvenience - trekking down from Dublin to the remote countryside will disrupt his planned weekend off but he doesn't expect any long term repercussions. For the inhabitants of Crumm, though, it brings back memories of the dreadful time when the valley was cleared to make way for the dam - a time when it was easy for someone to go missing without notice......
Meanwhile, 23 year old Peggy Casey who runs the village's only pub, The Angler's Rest, has troubles of her own. Since her parents died, the ownership and running of the pub has been shared between her and her three siblings - but the others seem to prefer to be anywhere but in Crumm; Carla teaches in Wexford during the week and only returns at weekends, Jerome runs off to Dublin at the slightest excuse, and Hugo works over in London, doing no one quite knows what. Maybe the exciting discovery of a dead body will bring them back home to Crumm.....


Although there's a definite murder mystery here - after all a dead body has just been found - it's as much a tale of family secrets and lies. In that respect it's cosier, and a lot less bloody, than many modern crime thrillers but I rather liked it. It's a little like a good old Agatha Christie murder - all seems quiet and placid in this small Irish village but it's as full of secrets as Miss Marple's St Mary Mead. As I found out more about the villagers of Crumm, and particularly the Casey family, things that had been buried and forgotten came back to light and as you'd expect, many of them seem to have something to hide. I began to make my 'short-list' of possible murderers....the village gossip seems to favour the idea of an IRA related shooting but what about the old-timer who props up the bar every night till closing time, or Jerome off in Dublin up to who-knows-what or even Hugo, absent for so long but who shows a sudden interest when he hears a body has been discovered.....

 Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher -  Killer Reads (Harper Collins)
Genre - adult fiction, crime

Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither by Sara Baume

review by Maryom

When loner Ray finds One-Eye at the dog pound it's like the meeting of two lost souls. Both are misfits, viewed with suspicion by neighbours or dog-wardens, carrying with them an aura of 'otherness', and the potential for violence or danger. At first glance you'd trust neither of them.
 Raised in virtual isolation by a grief-stricken father, Ray's life has been warped from the beginning; he never mixed with children his own age, never had mates to hang out with or a girlfriend, never even had a job. His neighbours see him as a bit weird, and keep their distance. Now, he's 57, and following the death of his father is living alone for the first time - and just doesn't know how to carry on.
For his part, One-Eye isn't the sort of dog you'd pick for a family pet. Looking at the world lop-sidedly from his remaining eye, he has the battered beaten-up appearance of a fighter - but while his wild, ferocious traits have been encouraged and developed by his previous owner, he's also been on the receiving end of violence from both men and animals. Full of fear, it takes time for him to come to trust his new owner.
Gradually a bond forms between these two, but that streak of violence still lurks beneath the surface and events cause the pair to go on the run.

To get this clear from the start, this isn't a sweetly charming tale, not some sentimental mix of Marley and Me and The Shawshank Redemption, where man meets dog, they bond, and live happily ever after; both are too scarred by life for that. It is though a tale of both man and dog trying to recover from deep hurts, striving to put their pasts behind them and start again.
 One-Eye had my sympathy from the start. His fear of people spoke of an abused past, and I believe vicious dogs aren't born, but trained to be that way by man, and are then victimised when that 'training' emerges at an inappropriate time and place. Ray starts out as just a little odd; tolerated in the village where he grew up, eyed with suspicion but basically harmless; it was only as his secrets were revealed that I began to wonder if this view wasn't quite true.

From the moment Ray takes One-Eye home, he starts to talk to him; as One-Eye is introduced to the house where Ray has lived all his life, as they walk round the village or along the seafront, play football on a deserted beach, and as they drive away from the seaside through Ireland's countryside, Ray keeps up a rambling monologue, ostensibly aimed at One-Eye, describing all he sees, capturing the sights and sounds along the way, sharing secrets and gradually revealing the dark secret he hides. I started to feel that this was more about a dog giving a man a chance at redemption, than the other, more obvious, way round.

For a debut novel, I think this is just amazing.  Baume's writing enlisted my empathy for both of these outsiders, and had me hoping against hope that Ray and One-Eye would in some way be saved.

 Originally published in Eire by Tramp Press, this book came to my attention over summer via Irish book bloggers* singing its praises, and catching Sara Baume at Edinburgh Book Festival, hearing her read from it and speak about it, convinced me it was something I would love, so I'm delighted to see it now published in the UK by Windmill Books.

Longlisted - Guardian First Book Award 2015
Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2015
Newcomer of the Year at the 2015 Irish Book Awards.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Windmill Books
Genre - adult fiction, literary, Guardian First Book Award,


* Bleach House Library review

A Slanting of the Sun by Donal Ryan

"An old man looks into the fearful eyes of a burglar left to guard him while his brother is beaten; an Irish priest in a war-torn Syrian town teaches its young men the art of hurling; the driver of a car which crashed, killing a teenage girl, forges a connection with the girl’s mother; a squad of broken friends assemble to take revenge on a rapist; a young man sets off on his morning run, reflecting on the ruins of his relationship, but all is not as it seems"

review by Maryom

Here at last is Donal Ryan's much awaited follow-up to The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December; A Slanting of the Sun, a collection of short stories that he mentioned working on at last year's Edinburgh Book festival and which I've been looking forward to ever since.
Now, there's always a 'thing' about how to go about reviewing a story collection - do you go through each one, giving each as much review space as a novel? Skip through, outlining plots but not dwelling long on each? or treat it as a whole, just name-checking your favourite? I think the publicist's blurb above says all you need to know about the content - so I'm going for the over-view.

First off, it's best to make clear that these aren't the cheeriest of stories; presumably like Tolstoy's families, happy stories are all alike, it's the unhappy ones that have the tale to tell! The mood is generally reflective, and often heart-wringingly sad - so much so that, four or five stories in, I was tweeting about being "wrung out like a dishcloth". For make no mistake, there's an emotional roller-coaster waiting for you inside these pages.

The characters themselves seem, on the outside, to be a pretty normal, almost nondescript, bunch - folk you could pass in the street any day and never remark upon, but, as Atticus Finch says in To Kill A Mocking Bird, "you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them". This is Ryan's gift, to put himself in someone else's shoes, get inside his character's head, and then pull the reader along with him - making us feel the hope, pain, remorse and regret. Happiness, for there is some in among the anguish, generally seems to be confined to some distant past, a golden moment, lit up as the slanting sunbeam illuminates a room, but which faded quickly away, leaving the rest of life feeling dull in comparison.

 The style of telling is quiet and undramatic, like one person quietly chatting to another over a coffee or a pint down the pub - but the tales they have to tell will knock you sideways!

I said I'd mention my favourite - the last, A Slanting of the Sun, which ends on a note of forgiveness and reconciliation.

If you want something fun and light, that will make you laugh out loud - go elsewhere.
If you want a read that will move you, maybe shock you, make you stop and look twice at your neighbours and wonder what makes them 'tick', let you experience emotions that I hope would never befall you in real life, this is the one to choose.


I have a feeling gleaned from fellow-bloggers, than while well known in Eire, Donal Ryan isn't as widely appreciated this side of the Irish Sea - he should be!

Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Doubleday

Genre- adult, short stories,

If I Never See You Again by Niamh O'Connor

review by Maryom

DI Jo Birmingham is a single mum trying to cope with the needs of her two sons and the demands of her job - neither task is helped by her boss, ex-husband Dan who appears to be standing in the way of her promotion. When she stumbles on the murder of a Dublin prostitute and is given charge of the case, she thinks she might at last have the chance to prove what she can do.

Told mainly from Jo's point of view, the story follows the unfolding Garda investigation, linking the first murder with others committed in the same area of Dublin leading to the realisation that there's a serial killer on the loose. There are slight 'asides' to hint at the killer's reasoning and methods but nothing to give the culprit way - and for once I had no idea who dunnit till the very end, though there were plenty of suspects to choose from.

Niamh O'Connor is a new author to me who I discovered via Twitter when she was nominated for an Irish Book Award for the latest Jo Birmingham thriller, Too Close For Comfort. Unfortunately at the time my library didn't have that available but also it seemed logical to start at the beginning of a series. I discovered afterwards that If I Never See You Again had also been nominated for an award - in the Best Newcomer category, 2010. I do expect anything up for an award to be good, but this was absolutely my kind of detective story - a good balance between work and personal life (and the problems of both), not too much gore and, most importantly, believable characters - both cops and villains.

If I Never See You Again is an engrossing, unputdownable read. It's nearly 400 pages long but I whizzed through it in a couple of days. On this showing, Niamh O'Connor is a crime writer I definitely want to read more of.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Transworld Ireland 
Genre - adult, crime/thriller, 

Buy If I Never See You Again from Amazon