Book review: Gripping yarn is a solid debut

US-born author RP O’Donnell, who now lives in West Cork, has a good grasp of village life and the nature that surrounds it

RP O’Donnell: Description of nature often mirrors the turmoil in the fictional Cork village of Kilcraven. Picture: Christopher Luke

• All The Old Clocks
• RP O’Donnell
• New Island Books, €17.95

Set in the fictional village of Kilcraven in West Cork, this is a mystery story unravelled by the main character in the novel, Emma, who is damaged from a devastating love affair.

She used to have a promising career in the gardaí but was let go for reasons that are revealed. Now working as a conscientious librarian, Emma, a fan of Sherlock Holmes’ novels, is called upon by Jimmy to investigate a murder.

The local guards have arrested Colm for the crime. But Jimmy and his wife, Frances, the parents of Colm, don’t believe that their son — estranged for 30 years — killed Mr Hollis, the sole occupant of what is referred to in the narrative as the Big House.

There is no apparent motive although the guards say that robbery was the intention. 

But why would Colm, who moved to Belfast and became a priest, according to an anonymous letter sent to his parents about five years previously, come all the way from Northern Ireland to rob an old man?

It all takes off when one night, Emma hears angry shouting and a rifle shot in Mr Hollis’s house, followed by the sound of a pistol firing. 

A man slams the front door of the house and bolts towards the woods. 

Emma, reminded of Sherlock Holmes’ demands for ‘Data, Data, Data,’ looks through a window and sees old Mr Hollis dead and another man slumped against a wall, badly hurt.

The injured man turns out to be Colm and is taken to hospital where his prospects of recovery are considered poor.

It’s a double whammy for Colm’s parents, who never got over his disappearance as a teenager and are now in fear for his life.

Sergeant Noonan, considered by the villagers to be a “sleazy” cop, says there is no reason to believe that the crime was anything more than a burglary that went tragically wrong — both for the victim and for the burglar. 

Emma believes Noonan is hiding something. He keeps insisting that there was no third man.

Hostile towards Emma poking around the story, Noonan tells her that she can either be a disgraced ex-inspector or a librarian.

Noonan is right. Emma is a librarian — with a past. But she has a strong sense of injustice. 

Onto the scene arrives Charley, a nephew of Colm — and an ex-boyfriend of Emma. Solicitous of Emma, he gives her a new anthology of Sherlock Holmes’s books.

Charley knew Emma as “the girl who wanted to change the world, to give it justice...” And he was the boy who believed she would do that. Eight years later, the two are drawn together.

While the rekindling of the romance is a thread throughout the story, it is the teasing apart of the evidence that propels the narrative.

Bad enough to have a somewhat bent cop in the village but the solicitor is also dodgy.

At the centre of the tale is the local pub, Nolans, where gossip is traded for more gossip and aspersions are cast on various individuals.

Take note of one such person who makes a rare appearance in the bar but makes quite an impact.

Village life is well-described with the real-life Fields supermarket of Skibbereen name-checked. However, in tight-knit Kilcraven, there is an unlikely scam going on that inadvertently involves most of the villagers.

This is a gripping yarn, even if hard to fathom when it comes to the scam. There is much description of nature — often mirroring the turmoil in the village.

It’s a solid debut for the US-born author who lives in West Cork.