cover image The Death of an Irish Seawolf

The Death of an Irish Seawolf

Bartholomew Gill. William Morrow & Company, $23 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-688-14183-7

A blistering start provides the latest Peter McGarr mystery with all the atmosphere of an espionage thriller. But then all the characters are sequestered for an interminable mid-narrative wait that drags the plot to a halt and squanders most of the tension. Clement Ford has lived to a ripe old age on a remote Irish island, keeping his past of WWII-era piracy a secret while dispensing funds to the sullen islanders through a secret trust fund that has insured both their silence and their loyalty. Now his worse nightmare has happened. A nemesis from his thieving days has sailed a boat into the local waters. In the space of a few pages, bodies are strewn, more bodies are missing and McGarr, head of the Special Crimes Unit, is called from Dublin to investigate. The man chasing Ford is also older, speaks in a mysterious language and has an evil brood of offspring for helpers. All this comes at the reader at an agreeable clip before hunter and hunted and wounded and dead all but vanish, and McGarr, his wife and daughter, and the rest of the coppers sit and wait. Gill, usually a more than able stylist, isn't able to keep his reader's attention with romantic subplots and stuff about sudden invasions of the beautiful and windswept locale by tourists with the same last name. McGarr and his wife, Noreen, have been a pleasure to encounter before (Death of an Ardent Bibliophile; Death of a Joyce Scholar), but this time Gill forsakes his usual atmospheric style for a gutsy start that runs out of steam in a hurry. (Nov.)