The Ruin

Garda Cormac Reilly has been sent on what he was beginning to think was a wild goose chase for a minor domestic.  After some time he did find the address.  There he finds a teenage girl and a young boy, and their dead mother.  Because he has no radio in his police car, Reilly takes them to the hospital in Castlebar.  The girl, Maude Blake disappears while Reilly is with the boy in the examination room.

Twenty years later, and Reilly is now a detective sergeant and in charge of cold cases in Galway.  His superior officer Brian Murphy  wants him to look back at the case.  The young boy, now a young man has recently committed suicide.  The sister has returned to Galway, and she feels that there is something suspicious about the death of her brother.  Reilly wonders if Murphy has suspicions of Maude.  However, Reilly is not to investigate the suicide, but rather the death of his mother.

Another DS informs Reilly that Maude had collected CCTV coverage for the bridge for the time her brother was supposed to have jumped from it.  There is nothing on any of the cameras’ recordings.  However, the Garda are refusing to investigate any further.  Maude tries to get her brother’s girlfriend, Aisling, to help her gather information.

Reilly learns that a social worker had removed the children from their home because they were being abused.  However, that didn’t last long as her boss overruled her.

Reilly is then caught off guard when his friend Danny McIntyre comes up with information that a woman had given Maude heroin just before her mother died of an overdose.  McIntyre also says that there is a rumour going around that Reilly had been seen coming out of Maude’s hotel room.

With all this crap on his plate, can Reilly get to the bottom of the case?  At times he feels that he is in over his head.  Author Dervla McTiernan has written an excellent psychological thriller in the first of a series, which in my mind is refreshing.  I’m looking forward to reading the next books in this modern series.