I loved Sarah Stewart Taylor’s first Maggie D’Arcy novel, The Mountains Wild. It was one of my favorite books of 2020. It was atmospheric with a strong sense of place, set in both Ireland and Long Island. The second book, A Distant Grave, has more of a thriller feeling about it. There’s a tension and suspicion that permeates this novel, a different sort of emotion from that in the first book.
Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’Arcy and her daughter, Lilly, need their vacation to Ireland after the death of Maggie’s ex-husband the previous year. They’re planning to stay with Conor, Maggie’s rediscovered love, and his son, Adrian, so they can all get to know each other. But, just before they’re to leave, Maggie and her partner, Dave, catch a case. A man is found shot on a beach, with no identification. Once he’s identified as Gabriel Treacy from Dublin, Maggie calls an old friend, senior detective Roly Byrne with the Garda Siochana. The report back is odd. Gabriel deleted all his email and social media accounts just recently.
While the D.A.’s office in Suffolk County believe Treacy’s death links to recent gang shootings, Maggie’s boss agrees that she might learn more on the Irish end. She has just a short trip there, learning about Treacy’s work with an international aid organization, his time as a hostage in Afghanistan, and the murder of his lawyer, before she’s yanked back to her job in the U.S. The more she digs, the more she suspects Treacy’s death, and that of his lawyer, are linked to Treacy’s past, not to a gang shooting.
Maggie is not the self-confident homicide detective in A Distant Grave. She’s uneasy and tense, feeling as if someone is always watching, and worried about a criminal who has been released from prison. That uneasiness and tension extends to the atmosphere in this book. She’s trying to divide her time between the case and her grieving daughter, and she panics at times, rushing home to make sure Lilly is safe. The only time Maggie is ever at ease is when she’s with Conor, and, even then, she’s always thinking about the investigation.
A Distant Grave is much more of a thriller than The Mountains Wild. Taylor still reaches into the past for answers to the mystery, but this book is a much more tense, threatening story than the earlier one. I’ll be interested to see where Maggie’s future takes her now.
Sarah Stewart Taylor’s website is https://www.sarahstewarttaylor.com/
A Distant Grave by Sarah Stewart Taylor. Minotaur Books, 2021. ISBN 9781250256447 (hardcover), 416p.
FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent me a copy of the book, hoping I would review it.
I loved The Mountains Wild. Too bad that she’s decided to veer more towards a thriller with the second book. Hope that she returns to writing atmospheric mysteries with future books. Have you read any of Taylor’s earlier Sweeney series?
Only read the first one, O’Artful Death, but it was terrific. Loved the quirky character of art historian Sweeney St. George. I have both, Mansions of the Dead & Judgment of the Grave sitting in my summer pile. It’s so disappointing that SST decided to abandon the series.
Happy Reading Lesa!
My guess, Icewineanne, is that she didn’t abandon the series. Kind often, a publisher abandons it, leaving the author and series homeless. I can’t say that’s what happened, but it’s quite possible. No, I haven’t read the earlier series. Someday!
I will be trying out the first one, my husband has already read it. He preferred the first series about grave art and we have both read all the books in that series.
Interesting that this one becomes more thrillerish. I might like that more, or not.