LatinosUSA

Hi, all:

I share the next (and so far last, but not for long) novel in one of my favourite police procedural series.

Marked for Death (Inspector Sheehan Mysteries #8) by Brian O’Hare

A Knight of the Realm is murdered.
High-level VIPs will attend the funeral.
One of them is marked for death.

Sir Theodore Hayes was a hard and unpopular businessman. There is no shortage of suspects for his murder. Distracted by two further, seemingly unconnected murders, Sheehan and his team are baffled by the killings.

Then Sheehan discovers that the Hayes’ murder is only the first move in a terrorist plot to ‘rock the British Isles’. The New IRA is planning something huge on the day of Sir Theodore’s funeral.

But after days of frantic enquiry the team learns nothing about the New IRA threat. Even on the morning of the funeral, with the hours racing by, Sheehan’s brain is still in turmoil.

Can he glean enough from the myriad small clues rattling through his head to figure out the plot in time to stop the terrorists?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213309252-marked-for-death?

About the author:

Brian O’Hare’s early writing was academic but when he decided to write fiction, his success surprised him. His books have won several awards and his first mystery novel, Angel of Death, led to the award-winning Inspector Sheehan Mysteries series. There are eight books in the series with a ninth on the way.

Before retirement he was Assistant Director of the Southern Regional College in Northern Ireland. Married, with three children, ten grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, he now writes full-time. For many years he and his wife enjoyed travelling, especially in France. He also enjoys reading, chess and plays golf twice a week.

Reviewers say that O’Hare writes with a keen eye for detail with his tales evolving at a surprisingly fast pace, that he leans towards the human side of his characters,that he imbues them with a real-world presence that is in turn witty and passionate. If you are interested in discovering whether or not there is any truth to these judgements, the novels are available on Amazon, sometimes at a reduced rate.

My review:

I have been following the series of Inspector Sheehan’s Mysteries since the first novel and have come to grow fond of him and his team. I always look forward to reading their next adventure, set in Northern Ireland, and they never disappoint.

Author Brian O’Hare has created a great team of detectives who have come together and grown across the different novels, confronting all kinds of cases. This police procedural series has all the elements followers of the genre love, without being so bogged down in detail that a casual reader might get lost or find it too specialised, while at the same time paying a lot of attention to the characters, their relationships, and the setting.

The political situation in Northern Ireland is particularly relevant to this story, where the New IRA decides to do something that will bring them to the attention of the whole world. And they count on somebody pretty special to do it. They get their chance and inspiration from a seemingly completely unrelated murder case, which Sheehan and his team are investigating. But Sheehan doesn’t believe in chance and pays plenty of attention to the small details, and some things somehow bother him about the whole setup and the strange coincidences that keep crossing his path.

The novel starts with a nasty episode between teenagers that appears unrelated to what happens next, but we come to see its relevance later on. And readers also get to see the action, the crimes, and the planning, from the point of view of the perpetrator. But that doesn’t mean we know who that person is until the very end (or perhaps some readers guessed it earlier on, but I didn’t this time). I was fascinated by the peek we are allowed into the criminal’s mind, and there are other great moments in the book, good news for some team members, and also scary ones, as an undercover operation doesn’t go according to plan.

This is a solid police procedural novel, a page-turner, with a gripping story that ramps up the intensity in the last few chapters, as we have a clock-is-ticking kind of situation. It is well-written, with wonderful touches of humour, and it will delight followers of the series, although it can also be read as a standalone book. The author includes a glossary where he shares information about the New IRA, and explains how the police service of Northern Ireland is organised, so that readers not familiar with it can follow the story and who everyone is with ease.

I recommend this novel to readers of police procedural and mystery novels, as I do all the other novels in the series. And I am pleased to add that I know the next one is already being edited, so I hope I’ll be reviewing it soon.

I got an ARC copy of this novel from the author, which I freely chose to review, and this has not affected my opinion.

Thanks to the author for this wonderful novel (and I hope he recovers soon, as he has been having some health difficulties in recent times), thanks to all of you for being here, reading, sharing, commenting, and liking. Stay well and keep smiling!