Irish Cottage Murder

Welcome to the Irish village of Ballynagh, where murder is soon to be a frequent visitor. American Torrey Tunet, 28, has been invited by compatriot Desmond Moore to stay at his castle in Ballynagh while she works as an interpreter at a conference in nearby Dublin. But despite the comfortable lodgings, Torrey is desperate. She has only three weeks to come up with $40,000 to set aright a tragedy she provoked many years earlier, before she escaped a life of crime. Unfortunately, one of Torrey's fellow guests at the castle is Luke Willinger, a landscape architect who knows her secret history only too well. Then the corpse of a stranger is discovered in a nearby bog, and Moore is murdered shortly after lending Torrey an heirloom necklace. When she is caught by the police while having the necklace appraised, Torrey becomes the chief suspect in both murders. Determined not to be scapegoated, she turns sleuth. This promising debut is the first in a projected series about Torrey's escapades in Ballynagh. Deere offers plot twists aplenty and an appealing heroine, whose mastery of several languages peppers the story with foreign words and their definitions. The author's dependence on flashbacks to heighten suspense becomes irritating, but her skill at deploying red herrings and her penchant for romantic subplots assures that readers will be eager for more tales of murder in Ballynagh. (May)