When a little girl goes missing, Cormac Reilly can’t understand why his boss refuses to pull some much-needed bodies off the drug hunting team. So with Cormac interviewing the family, Peter Fisher has no one but himself to follow up a lead. He drives to a lake. The abductor is indeed there, and drives his car straight at Peter, who fires three fatal shots. The shots are fatal in more ways than one. They provide the perfect excuse to exile Peter to the village where his detested cop father rules the roost. Cormac’s own career also looks as though it’s going nowhere. Thus Dervla McTiernan sets the scene for a gripping yarn that involves major police corruption, a homicidal doctor, an escaping single mother, a major relationship death and plenty of double dealing. It would be horrendously disappointing if there was indeed that much corruption at high levels among the Garda but McTiernan handles it all so skilfully that you never doubt her for an instant. The main and subplots fire along and the psychological depth of the characters makes for a satisfying read. The technical information seems spot on too. If you have a burner phone, be wary of carrying it around with your real one all the time. I have only one suggestion for improving this book. Could we have a list of how to pronounce those Irish names?
With police corruption at its dark heart, The Good Turn is another solid entry in a police procedural series that has been pure gold for crime fiction fans since the first book.
Adjusting to the new reality of his long-distance relationship with girlfriend Emma, Cormac Reilly has less patience in the tank than usual to deal with the politics that govern the daily machinations of his job. Cormac is more than aware that his work superiors do not regard him as a team player, and the level of his concern about these opinions would seem to be decreasing with each day that passes.
Reilly’s younger colleague, Peter Kelly, is at the other end of his career and keen to make his mark in Galway police. Tasked to take the report of a child who claims to have witnessed an abduction in his street, neither Peter or his colleagues expect the incident to be the real deal. Yet it is.
Launching out on his own to follow up a lead on a suspect, Peter is involved in a fatal shooting. Put under review and banished to Roundstone, where the obnoxious Des Kelly, Peter’s father, runs the local police station, Peter despairs that he has possibly torched his career with his ill thought out decisions. His superior, Cormac Reilly, is accused of leading the young Garda astray.
Outing #3 of Cormac Reilly devotes less page time to its hard done by Irish detective than the series priors, and The Good Turn is a better novel for it. There is less to read here about Cormac’s relationship with girlfriend Emma also, though these inclusions are pivotal as to how the rest of the series will develop.
There is a lot going on in The Good Turn, and each plot thread is tended with great care. The reader will need to keep sharp about whose perspective we are reading as the fact gathering continues, with both detectives Cormac and Peter working on independent concerns for much of the novel.
Strong characterization carries The Good Turn throughout, and this has been a key feature of all three books in this deservedly popular series. Both the investigators and the investigation are given equal consideration in The Good Turn, which is immensely satisfying to anyone who prefers a holistic experience with their reading of crime fiction.
Have you read The Ruin and The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan? If you are a crime and police procedural fan then you really need to get your hands on them. The Good Turn is the 3rd book in the Cormac Reilly series and in my opinion the best one yet. Police corruption, a missing girl and the mystery of another girl who is traumatised, this book has everything you want in a crime and thriller read.
The Good Turn is a twisty and well executed story following 3 main storylines . Cormac is struggling with his superiors who are still making life hard for him. On top of that his personal life is just going from bad to worse. Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway after he is put in an impossible position and faced with prosecution he moves to Roundstone, a small town and is set to work with his father, a man that he has never seen eye to eye with. We also hear about Anna and her daughter Tilly who escape Dublin when Tilly stops talking.
The stories work well together and is is not until close to the end that we see the connections. Set in Ireland in winter, the cold and bleakness comes through. I could not put this book down, wanting to see how it was all going to play out. Peter and Cormac are so similar in personality and their need to seek the truth. They are both the type of people that will not give up and take the easy way out.
Thank you to Harper Collins Australia for my advanced copy of this book to read. All opinions are my own and are in no way biased
