This is a middling-at-best mystery, and possibly the least enjoyable of the Dervla McTiernan novels I have read. Her Cormac Reilly novels are excellent and I’ve enjoyed some of the shorter freebies on Audible as well.
The main issue here is largely that there is nothing to solve – the reader knows pretty much straight away what happened to Nina, and instead the story is about the family’s struggle to learn her fate and come to terms with it.
It’s not a spoiler to tell you that Nina was killed by her boyfriend. But what follows is the story of two families – one desperate to learn the truth and another desperate to cover it up. Both families do the unthinkable – McTiernan is trying to show us just how far we will go to protect our children. But the novel lacks nuance. Characters don’t really grapple with the morality of their actions. Nina’s mother bends minor rules and laws such as trespassing in her quest, but the ordinarily sensible step-father seems pushed to the brink all of a sudden. Both parents of the boy realise he is guilty – and while the father goes on the offensive, his mother shows some signs of guilt that aren’t fully explored.
A bit of a disappointing outing – I struggled to stay interested.
Welloflostplots 