As the author explains in a preface, the word ‘rúin’ can be read in English, or it can be given its Irish meaning. In Irish, it means secret, but it is also a term of endearment. All three elements of the word come in to this debut novel by Irish lawyer Dervla McTiernan, now resident in Australia.
The first one section of the book is set in Galway in1993. Cormac Reilly, a young and inexperienced Garda (policeman) responds to a call to a derelict house, where he finds a mother dead in bed, and two silent, neglected children. The oldest child, 15 year old Maude, is protective of her five-year old brother, insisting that they both be taken to the police station.
Twenty years later, Detective Cormac Reilly is back in Galway, after climbing the promotional ladder in Dublin. He has moved to be with his partner, Emma, who is undertaking a research project based there. His deployment to the Mill Street station is treated with suspicion, and despite his long and successful experience, he is relegated to reviewing cold cases. He is largely side-lined from a new case where the discovery of Jack Blake’s body in the river is treated as a suicide. Jack’s partner, Aisling is devastated – and McTiernan captures this so well – and his sister refuses to believe that it is suicide. And Detective Reilly finds that the two cases are connected: Jack was that five-year old silent boy in the derelict house twenty years ago; his sister Maude is still fighting for her brother – this time rejecting the easy solution of ‘suicide’ that the police are pushing.
Like many detective/crime novels, this book combines the plot line, the personal home life of the detective protagonist, and the office politics of the police station. The book is told in chronological sections, stepping forward a few days at a time. The focus of the action switches between Aisling and Maude in their fight to get Jack’s case investigated more fully. Cormac reviews that early case from his older, more experienced perspective, following up on the cold cases that he has been assigned, and negotiating the resentment and duplicity of his fellow police officers.
There are a lot of characters here, and often found myself stopping to think “Hold on, who’s that again?”. I’m not particularly good with television crime programs either, which have many small characters who may or may not be associated with the plot line, and I found it even harder to keep track of when I didn’t have a clear visual picture of the characters in my head.
Crime is not one of my favourite genres, and I have mainly read it because it has been a book group selection (which is the case here too). Despite my frequent confusion, I was certainly drawn into the story and I liked the way that you were not left reading and re-reading, not quite sure what the ending was and who ‘dun’ it. I found myself thinking of Peter Temple and Garry Disher, two Australian crime authors whom I have read, and I think that I preferred the more layered treatment of characters that McTiernan provides. She’s not writing against a toxic masculinity, the violence is less bloody but more intimate (and disturbing) and there is a depth to the ‘victims’ – indeed, she doesn’t see them as such, but more as individuals in their own right who have been dragged into a mess not of their making. If I’m going to read another crime novel, I think I’d like it to be one of hers.
I have included this on the Australian Women Writers Challenge database
My rating: 7.5 maybe 8
Read because: CAE bookgroup.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
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