Intrigued due to the author, but stayed due to a surprisingly well rounded cozy mystery!

3.75 Stars

Set in the small Irish village of Duneen, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else, and if someone comes to town or someone leaves town, before sunset the whole town knows. Sergeant P.J. Collins is the village garda, an unmarried man with an uneventful life, an uneventful job, that is until the day the builders managed to unearth bones. Human bones. Most people tend to view P.J. Collins as a likeable fellow, if incapable of performing his duties should he ever be physically required to move swiftly, not that they were unkind to him.

Locals begin to gossip, conjecture on whose bones these might be, with the only person to have disappeared from their town was that Tommy Burke, leaving two young women broken hearted, Brid Riordan, his betrothed, and Evelyn Ross, who had felt he belonged to her. It is up to P.J. to investigate, something he has never had to do, never done. Detective Superintendent Linus Dunne is sent from Cork to oversee the investigation, a situation that P.J. Collins feels is wrong, it’s his first real chance and he has to take advantage of that.

Everything in Duneen changes when the body is discovered, and then a second body of an infant. P.J. finds more than he bargained for when he begins to question some of the locals about the disappearance of Tommy Burke. Nerves start to fray, people share rumours and “alternative facts.”
When P.J. begins to talk to the two women, Brid Riordan and Evelyn Ross, things get even more interesting as P.J. becomes the object of some affection. One woman is more than he’s ever had to concern himself with, but two?

There is more to this mystery, and more to this story than just the mystery. There’s the pain and heartbreak of the past held onto through the years, the sorrow of so much loss in such a small village, the loss of so many dreams, plans, hopes for the future as individuals and as a town, and the secrets kept for too long by too many. There’s also newly gained self-assurance that comes from finally being seen and appreciated – a powerful thing for someone who has believed he had little to offer. There are even a few amusing moments.

This is a delightful debut novel with some wonderful characters, but Sergeant P.J. Collins is the main character, and certainly a charming one.


Pub Date: 01 Aug 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Atria Books

I've been watching Graham Norton's chat show on BBC America for years, so I was incredibly excited to read this novel. I'm not sure if it would have had the same effect on me if I didn't already know him, because there were times when I could hear his voice and his charm in my head as I read his words and I definitely added to the experience of reading <i>Holding<i/>. I may have to sign up for Audible after all so that I can hear the audio book, read by the author.

This is an enjoyable whodunnit with a big mystery in a very small Irish village. At times this book was a bit slow for a mystery novel, but I think that's part of the charm. I grew up in a very small, rural area in the U.S. and every time I go back to visit I'm reminded of how much slower life seems to be than it is when I'm in the city. I'd say the same stark difference applies when you compare <i>Holding<i/> to other contemporary police novels. I almost said "police procedurals", but this novel is not what I'd call a police procedural. While the main character is P.J., the local law enforcement official and does involve the standard DNA testings and typical investigative steps, P.J. is not accustomed to dealing with actual crime beyond violations involving traffic or intoxication - or both.

As much as I enjoyed reading about the characters of Duneen, it took me a little longer to read this novel than it usually does for me to finish a book of this size. I don't know if that's a bad thing, it just goes back to what I found to be slow pacing of the novel where I wasn't in a rush to pick it back up and find out what happened. It's more of a relaxing stroll of a mystery novel than a rush-to-the-finish that I can't put down.

Thank you to the author for a charming novel and the prior years of entertainment on The Graham Norton Show, as well as Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy for review.

Irish novelists are rocking the publishing world this year, and Norton’s debut novel is among the best of them. My great thanks go to Net Galley and Atria Books, who provided me a free and early read in exchange for this honest review. You should get it and read it. Atria will release it August 1, 2017.

Our protagonist is Sergeant PJ Collins; the setting is the tiny Irish town of Duneen. PJ is ecstatic when a corpse is uncovered at a local construction site. At last, something noteworthy has occurred in his sleepy village, and he can’t wait to tell everybody. He starts with his housekeeper, Mrs. Meany:

“I’m after finding a body.”
“You what?”
“A human body!”
He had waited his whole life to utter those words, and it felt as good as he had always imagined.
“God spare us!” Mrs. Meany gasped.

The villagers are convinced this is the body of Tommy Burke, a man loved ardently by two local women. Evelyn has never married; she and her two sisters still live in the family manse in which they were raised. Is Evelyn bat-shit crazy, as some people suggest, or is she merely frustrated and lonely?

Brid also loved Tommy. They were to be married, but he upped and disappeared just before the wedding. She is currently locked in a joyless union; she and her husband remain together for the sake of the children and the farm. It isn’t easy.

And then there’s our protagonist, PJ, who is graying at the temples, never having known love. He hasn’t even had a girlfriend. He went on a date, once, and the girl guffawed when he wasn’t able to situate his large self into a theater seat to view the movie. That was enough for him. He’s married to his work, and she’s a lonely mistress. At the end of the day there’s only Mrs. Meany, his aging housekeeper, and she will have to retire, sooner or later.

But things are about to change.

UK readers may have been drawn to this novel by its author, who is also a celebrity and has a television show, but I had never heard of him. I won’t forget him now.

One cautionary note: there’s some sharp, dark humor involving religion that will make this a poor fit for some readers. I loved it, but the devout may not. There’s also a fair bit of bawdy language.

For those that enjoy dark humor, this one is hard to beat. As an added bonus, it is ultimately uplifting, and reminds us that one is never too old to find love in this world.

4 stars

An Irish village called Duneen is a quiet place. Not much happens there. When a skeletonized body is found at a building site, everyone in town assumes it is the body of Tommy Burke who disappeared nearly twenty-three years earlier.

Sergeant PJ Collins has never investigated a murder before. Now at age fifty-three, he believes he probably never will. When he gets the opportunity, he is strangely thrilled.

This book gives detailed histories of the main characters. They are interesting characters to say the least. There is plenty of detail given about these characters, but rather than detract from the story it adds to it.

“Darkly comic…host of loveable characters?” I don’t think so. The review for this book I found to be patently incorrect. The people in the book are more sad than anything else. The overweight cop, the two seriously disturbed women, the whole depressed town was lacking something. On the other hand, this novel is both well written and plotted and it had moments of brilliance. It also lost its way a couple of times. The suspense was nicely achieved. All in all, this book is not a bad start for Mr. Norton’s debut novel.

I want to thank Netgalley and Atria Books for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

PJ has been the sergeant in a small Irish village called Duneen for 15 years. One day the remains of a body buried 20 years ago are discovered on a building site. It is assumed they belong to Tommy Burke, who disappeared at around the right time, leaving his fiancee Brid, and Evelyn, who loved hm too. In the intervening years Brid has married Anthony, but Evelyn has really recovered from Tommy's disappearance. PJ, in conjunction with a Superintendent from Cork, solves the crime.

This was a short, easy read, but rather superficial. It was a little like a cross between Maeve Binchy and a "cozy" mystery. There was an over-attentive housekeeper, a rape, an illegitimate child, an affair, a suspect with problems with alcohol, "spinsters" who were a bit strange etc etc. All very unoriginal. Then in the end, nothing particularly terrible had actually happened. I think we were meant to like PJ, but I found the constant references to his weight off-putting and his sudden success with the ladies unlikely. I would be very surprised if he made a successful detective in Cork.