Very enjoyable book. Good mystery and was a real page turner! Looking forward to reading more by this author!

Great storyline with good strong characters. Very well written. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Reverend Mother Aquinas discovers a decaying body in a trunk which was supposed to contain donated books for her convent. Inspector Patrick is called in to find the murderer. Bodies start dropping. In Dublin at the time of the troubles in the early twentieth century, could it be the IRA? Was it the family of the murdered man? His business rivals. Reverend Mother is on the case.

5 Stars - "The Reverend Mother receives a decidedly gruesome gift in this compelling Irish historical mystery"

Big thanks to Cora Harrison for writing this mystery, and NetGalley for sending it to me. The Reverend Mother series are great as are all of her Irish mysteries. I have a second one I will be starting also in the Reverend Mother series ( so excited). I am Irish and the age of the Reverend Mother and her cousin Lucy so I particularly love this series.

This one is a generational saga with this murder, and subsequent murders, not revealed until the last few pages. A tradesman who many felt was "uppity", because he had amassed so much money and built a large house in an exclusive area, is murdered. Henry Mulcahy was not well loved, but his housemaid and nurse Bridie was beloved of the sisters at the convent. Bridie and Mrs. Mulcahy are also eventually victims of the cover-up of this crime.

Not only was Mulcahy "of the skins" murdered, but his decaying for 3 days body was delivered in a trunk to the Reverend Mother. It was said to contain schoolbooks but actually contained Mr Mulcahy packed in some gruesome exhibits of his trade.

Reverend Mother Aquinas' cousin Lucy who had been at an auction, bid on the trunk and sent it to her. The nuns of St. Mary's Isle have a school for poor children at that location and a religious community had been there since ancient days.

Figuring in this episode also are several young adult protégés of the Reverend Mother, Eileen MacSweeney and Patrick the Constable. Adding to this is that several of Mulcahy's children, he has 13, as well as Eileen, are Republican Army sympathisers. This is the cusp of Ireland's partition.

Not really my type of story, didn't finish so I haven't reviewed it

4 stars

I read the Kindle edition.

It’s 1925 in Ireland. A strange trunk is delivered to the convent of the Reverend Mother Aquinas. It smells very bad, like dead things. Believing it to contain old books, she opens it and finds the body of one of Cork’s wealthiest merchants by the name of Henry Mulcahy. His son, Fred aged about twenty, is standing by. He appears to have mixed feelings about his father’s body in the trunk. He is dressed in the usual Republican outfit. Now they called themselves the Irish Republican Army. He points a gun at Mother Aquinas and then turns and shoots the dead body. He then makes his escape.

Mother Aquinas goes inside to phone Inspector Patrick Cashman. On his way to the convent, he tries to arrest Fred Mulcahy on another charge, when Fred is whisked away by a young woman on a moped. When Dr. Scher arrives, he confirms that the man was long dead before Fred shot him.

Patrick begins his investigation. He questions Mr. Hayes, the auctioneer who sold the trunk and then continues on to others. When Dr. Scher concludes his autopsy, he says that the cause of death was something like an iron bar hitting him on the back of the head. The Reverend Mother and Dr. Scher speculate on who might have wanted to kill Henry Mulcahy. He wasn’t a well-liked man. There was his purchase of a piece of land from the archdiocese that was a burial ground for unbaptized babies. There were some of his family members made up of twelve children and a wife. He was a very wealthy man, and some resented him for that.

With suspects coming out of the woodwork, and unscrupulous attorney and executor along with two more murders to contend with, Patrick has his hands full. When the murderer is finally revealed, it comes as a surprise.

This is a well written and plotted novel. The tension in the story begins immediately with the discovery of the body in the trunk and continues throughout the balance of the book. The characters are interesting and I like both the Reverend Mother Aquinas and Inspector Patrick Cashman. I appreciate the way in which Ms. Harrison writes her novels. They are filled with the colors and sounds on 1920’s Cork. The reader can almost imagine that they are there. I have read some of Ms. Harrison’s other novels and have liked them all. I will continue to read them.

I want to thank NetGalley and Severn House for forwarding to me a copy of this book for me to read and enjoy.