Murder in an Irish Bookshop

Starred review from January 11, 2021
The opening of a bookshop in Kilbane, Ireland, is cause for celebration in O’Connor’s outstanding seventh Irish Village mystery (after 2020’s Murder at an Irish Christmas), until Kilbane’s residents learn the shop is stocking only good literature and the co-owners, Oran and Padraig McCarthy, will let in only customers who can quote James Joyce or Seamus Heaney. When elderly Margaret O’Shea is found dead near the shop, garda Siobhán O’Sullivan is sure she died of natural causes, but when Siobhán tries to speak to Oran, his behavior strikes her as odd. She later wonders whether Oran’s antipathy to any fiction he doesn’t view as literary might be connected to Margaret’s death—and to the subsequent death of Deirdre Walsh, the self-published author of a dense literary novel, who collapses during a bookshop event. Deirdre’s tree nut allergy could have been the cause, but a power outage shortly before might have provided cover for a killer. Aided by a garda trainee, Siobhán pursues a puzzling investigation full of misdirection and enlivened by the input of her five rambunctious siblings. O’Connor reinforces her place as the queen of the cozy police procedural. Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency.