It’s finally time for Siobhan O’Sullivan and Macdara Flannery to get married. Siobhan has something borrowed and something blue. She has the dress and the priest and the tiara and all her brothers and sisters with her. Well, all but James. He’s not there, and he’s not answering his phone. Siobhan is at the altar, trying to decide if she and Macdara should go ahead with the wedding, or if they should wait for James. They decide to go ahead, reluctantly, and then the doors to the back of the church open up, and James is standing there in dirty clothes.
After apologizing for showing up in the middle of the wedding, and for not answering his phone, he explains. He was out on the dairy farm, and he found a dead body in the slurry pit. Before he realized what he was looking at, he’d tried to get closer to see what was in the pit, and he dropped his phone in.
Siobhan has many questions, but first they have a body they need to deal with. Mac and Siobhan stop the wedding, change clothes, and grab the photographer to head to the farm. They tell their guests to go ahead and enjoy the food and drinks, and the happy not-quite-married-yet couple head towards their crime scene.
As a surprise, Macdara had bought an old dairy farm and had James fixing up the farmhouse. The plan was to give it to Siobhan when the work was done, and they could live there together or rent it out, whatever they decide is best. But James had gone out to the barn and found an old slurry pit left from when it was an active dairy farm. It’s basically a pit of animal waste, but when James had moved the branches that covered it, he found something in the pit. It looked like a dead body, and one that had been there for a very long time.
Mac and Siobhan can’t do much to investigate until the crime scene unit makes it there, but their wedding photographer takes lots of photos of the scene. And when the neighbor comes over to welcome them, they may discover who the victim is. Gladys has lived next door with her husband Benji for decades, but when she sees that there is someone in the slurry pit in a dark suit, she immediately thinks it’s Tommy. Fifty years ago to the day, Tommy had stood her up for their wedding. She had thought all those years that he had just left, but he’d been there all along.
While the garda aren’t certain yet that it’s Tommy in the slurry pit, they have to admit that it is a possibility. And the more they talk to the neighbors, the more potential suspects they find. Howard was supposed to go in to business with him, opening a snooker parlor, but the thirty thousand quid they’d raised went missing when Tommy did. Gladys was supposed to marry Tommy, but when he didn’t show up, she married his friend Benji instead. Benji’s ex-wife Rose had a theory about a family inheritance. With just a few conversations, Macdara and Siobhan have a host of potential suspects, and motives. Was Tommy killed for love? For money?
And when they go back to the farmhouse the next day and find another body in the pit, they know that the killer is still around. Will Siobhan and Mac be able to figure out who the killer is before they strike again? And will they be able to keep crime at bay long enough to finish their interrupted wedding?
Carlene O’Connor’s favorite Irish police officers are back with Murder at an Irish Farm, the eighth in the Irish Village Mystery series. Garda Siobhan O’Sullivan and Detective Macdara Flannery have a new case, a new (old) farm, a host of suspects for murder living right next door, and a bird of prey circling overhead.
I am a big fan of these mysteries. I have been charmed by Siobhan O’Sullivan with the first Irish Village Mystery I read, and that has not gone away. These books are well written, smartly plotted, and filled with all the charm you’d expect from an Irish village. I was so happy to finally see some wedding action, and I like that O’Connor is keeping Siobhan’s siblings moving around too. There is an energy to the whole family as each kid grows up and finds their own voice, their own passion, their own path. It adds a sense of forward motion that some mystery series lack, and it makes me want to come back for more of these books.
Galleys for Murder on an Irish Farm were provided by Kensington Books, with many thanks.
