Tara Meehan is excited. She is getting ready to open her store, as long as the city sends her permit. After leaving New York City and moving to Ireland, she is ready to take her interior design skills and open up her shop of architectural salvage and reclaimed treasures. She’s been working hard for weeks, getting everything set up, and she feels like she’s earned a day off exploring the countryside. Having just learned how to drive, she takes her new Jeep and heads for the hills.
Someone had left a flyer in her door for a stone cottage for sale, with a map attached. When Tara drove out there, she could see why someone had left the flyer for her. It needed a lot of work, but the stones could be repurposed, the cottage built into something new but with its original structure. Looking around, Tara finds a tiny pug, scared and thirsty. She does what she can for the dog and then looks around for the owner. What she finds is a woman in a track suit, lying still. Tara checks to see if the woman is okay, but the heat that had been beating down on them lately was not kind to her, and there was nothing Tara could do for her. She calls the police for help and stays until they show up. With no one around to care for the dog, “Savage,” according to his name tag, Tara offers to take him home with her for now.
Eventually, Tara finds out that the woman she found was named Nancy Halligan, and they are saying that her death was due to the heat causing a heart attack. Tara offers to keep the dog until the family shows up to claim him. Her dog, Hound, has no issue with pug staying around, so Tara goes back to waiting for her business permit and planning her grand opening.
When Uncle Johnny and his fortune-telling girlfriend Rose come by the store to check on her, and Rose has nothing but warnings for her. She says Tara shouldn’t be left alone and that she should just take the day off. Tara’s shop isn’t really open yet, so she doesn’t put too much stock in what Rose says and stays in her store. And later that day, a woman comes into her shop, saying that she wanted to rent the place for a small gathering because she had seen a newspaper article about Tara and her new shop.
Tara can’t have host a gathering without her permit, so she suggests another location, the salvage shop where she gets her pieces, run by her friend Danny. The woman, heiress Veronica O’Farrell, agrees to the new location but asks Tara to do a job for her. She is celebrating her sobriety and wants to get some friends together to celebrate with her and for her to make some amends to those she has wronged. She wants Tara to choose a thoughtful gift for seven different people who will be at her gathering. But as she talks, Tara realizes that she knew Nancy Halligan, the woman Tara had found dead a week before. Nancy had been Veronica’s sponsor in AA. Veronica is devastated, but she still wants Tara to buy amends gifts on her behalf. Tara, knowing how hard it can be to make a living working for yourself, agrees.
But when Veronica is murdered, stabbed by the brooch that Tara had been admiring just the day before, Tara isn’t sure what to do. Should she continue with the job she was hired for, or should she walk away? And when she meets the individuals that Tara had been asked to buy gifts for, she is even more uncertain about finishing the job. But she is curious about Veronica and is worried that her store’s reputation may forever be tarnished because of Veronica’s death. Tara decides to go through with the job, both to honor Veronica’s memory but also to try to find the killer.
But the more she learns about the group of people that Veronica pulled together, the more Tara sees motives. There is her former best friend, who has been in love with Veronica’s first husband, because she stole him away. There is the couple she evicted who suffered a miscarriage shortly after that. There is the woman she pushed on the mountain who fell and then needed extensive medical care and physical therapy after, all at Veronica’s expense. Then there is her first husband’s daughter, her personal assistant, her bodyguard/attorney, and her most recent ex-husband, all with their own reasons for coming and their own reasons for hating Veronica.
The more Tara learns about the people in Veronica’s life, the more she realizes that one of them killed her and is playing games with the rest of them. Will Tara be able to sift through the gossip and the rumors, the secrets and the lies, in order to find a killer and save her store? Or will she find herself with a target on her back that she can’t get out from under?
Murder in Connemara is the second in the Home to Ireland Mystery series. Written by Carlene O’Connor, who also writes the Irish Village mysteries about garda Shioban O’Sullivan, this charming series sheds light on a different part of Ireland, the western harbor town of Galway. Featuring interesting Irish characters and the small town culture, this cozy mystery is a bit of craic in a lovely part of the world.
I enjoyed Murder in Connemara. I love these Irish mysteries from O’Connor, and this book is an action-packed whodunnit with lots of Irish flavor. Tara is a strong, smart character, and I look forward to seeing what kinds of trouble she gets herself into and out of in the future.
Egalleys for Murder in Connemara were provided by Kensington Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
