Book review: Sam Blake's Three Little Birds

Sam Blake's latest novel is set in a fictional town sleepy lakeside town in Co Mayo. Picture: Alice-Rose Jordan

• Three Little Birds 
• Sam Blake 
• Corvus, £14.99 

Leading crime writer Sam Blake’s latest gripping novel is set in the fictional Coyne’s Cross in Co Mayo. 

As facial reconstruction expert Carla observes about the slightly sleepy lakeside town, places like this can have its secrets. 

And picturesque Coyne’s Cross is gradually revealed to have more than its fair share of nefarious goings on, both in the past and in the present.

Carla, who has a doctorate in her speciality, finds herself drawn into a 14-year-old case when a skull is found in Lough Coyne. 

Local Detective Sergeant Jack Maguire presents Carla with the skull so that she can reconstruct its face using highly technical and scientific methods.

As part of her modus operandi, Carla likes to visit the last resting place of the victim under investigation; she feels personally responsible for finding the answers when a skull is entrusted to her.

Carla — along with Grace, a forensic psychologist who is her partner — decide to spend a bank holiday weekend in Coyne’s Cross where Jack is based. 

But Carla and Grace, far from enjoying a break from Dublin, find themselves mystified by the brutal murder of a local woman.

Jules, who ran the Coyne Arms pub and hotel, is found by Jack and Carla hanging from a tree with her shoes neatly placed on the ground — and with her heart cut out. 

Carla feels strongly that this is a murder with the victim being displayed as if the killer is making a statement.

Grace, who has the ability to think like a killer, says that the murder “is almost ritualistic” with the heart being cut to perhaps remove tainted blood. 

In keeping with Jack’s fear, the killer strikes again, this time murdering Jules’s sister using copycat methods in a different location. 

The sisters are from a family that have built businesses in and around their deceased parents’ large estate.

Throw into the mix a woman who goes missing and the novel, a little slow for a while, gathers pace with a sense of urgency. Jack, accompanied by Jack, accompanied by Carla (an expert in navigating caves), are involved in a race against time.

There is a sense of immersion in the world of this suspenseful story as the investigating duo desperately tries to reach their quarry in what they feel could be a hostage situation.

In the meantime, Carla has been working away on reconstructing the face of Gemma, a 17-year-old that went missing after a party in Coyne House, 14 years ago.

It turns out that the perpetrator of the murder of the two sisters is wreaking revenge for the circumstances surrounding the killing of Gemma.

The so-called cold case is alive again, tied into the contemporary murders.

Apart from her skull, Gemma’s body was never found. Yet in a miscarriage of justice, a local man was charged with the murder and sent to Mountjoy. (Gemma’s mobile phone had been found in the accused man’s van.)

Sam Blake has written another cracker of a crime novel with just the right amount of technical detail. It also has an emotional core. 

A part of Carla’s heart died when her best friend, Lizzie, disappeared. She can’t let cases like Gemma’s go. She won’t ever stop until she finds Lizzie. 

Carla sometimes thinks that Lizzie is trying to guide her. This combination of a forensic mind coupled with a smidgeon of the supernatural makes Carla a well-rounded character with a soft side.