Her Cousin’s Disappearance Draws Maggie Back to Ireland

Cousins, Erin and Maggie, grew up together. Erin was wild and unpredictable, but Maggie loved her. Then Erin went to Ireland to understand her heritage. She never returned, and Maggie was the one to go to try to find out what happened to her in 1993.

Now 23 years later, Erin’s scarf has been found. Other young women are missing in the same area and the Garda think the disappearances may be connected. Maggie is now a detective and a divorced mother with Lily, her teenage daughter. Luckily she and Brian, her ex-husband, are friendly. She leaves Lily with him and returns to Ireland hoping to find out at last what happened to Erin.

This is a mystery that will keep you guessing. The plot is complex woven between 1993 and the present. Maggie has contacts in Ireland, particularly Roly, a member of the Garda. He’s been investigating the case and keeping the family informed ever since the disappearance. Now Maggie teams up with him hoping to finally put the old suspicions to rest.

The setting for this story is wonderful. Irish history and snatches of songs are woven into the background giving a taste of Ireland. It made me want to visit. The characters come to life. Maggie and Roly are a good team, not lovers but friends. However, the character that makes the story is Erin. She is so vibrant that she makes people care about her disappearance 23 years later. You can understand why because getting glimpses of her is what makes you keep reading.

I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.

The Mountains Wild was a fairly standard police procedural. It's elevated slightly with its descriptions of Ireland, which is on my bucket list! The story is about a young woman who disappeared (as most books seem to be lately) and her cousin goes to find her. When she first disappeared in the 90s, the search went nowhere. A new development in 2016 takes her back. There really weren't a whole lot of surprises and I didn't feel particularly connected to the characters. It was an interesting read.

A new to me author and I absolutely loved this book. Atmospheric and vivid. You absolutely must read this amazing book. It's lyrical with a strong seamless plot. Maggie is strong and empathic. A wonderful twisty story that is impossible to put down. Can't wait for book two in this series and what Maggie will be up to next. Don't pass up this winner of a book. Happy reading!

Wow! This book was hard to put down! I liked the main characters Maggie and Roly and hope to see more of them. Complicated plot with many twists and turns, some quite unexpected. I loved reading about Ireland, I’ve visited Wicklow and Dublin and could picture some of the settings in my mind.

Maggie D’arcy’s life was shaped by her relationship with her cousin Erin Flaherty. They were as close as sisters: Erin lived with Maggie’s family on and off for years. Erin’s dad, Danny, owns Flaherty’s, an Irish bar on Long Island. Sarah Stewart Taylor has a dab hand in bringing locales to life, like Flaherty’s bar through Maggie’s eyes:

Instead I look up at the framed photographs and posters on the walls of the bar: Bobby Sands, Gerry Adams, the tricolor, a framed copy of Yeats’s “Easter, 1916,” some newer stuff too: a Michael Collins movie poster, a signed and framed Dropkick Murphys album. The standard American Irish bar kit.

This is not to minimize the cross-Atlantic ties of affection and family loyalty to the old sod: they are deep and solid. Erin knew very little about Brenda, her absentee mother, except that she was Irish: Maggie’s mom confided to her that Brenda had trouble staying in one place. Erin had that in common with her mother. She was always trying to get away. Erin went to Ireland in 1993, in search of her roots. Sadly, one day Erin’s roommates called Uncle Danny to say Erin had been missing for days. Danny was in no shape to travel so Maggie said she’d go. She stayed in Dublin for weeks and weeks, living in Erin’s flat, shadowing the police, and investigating on her own, to no avail.

Taylor skillfully weaves three different time periods together, in a non-linear fashion: Maggie and Erin’s childhood, from little girls to early twenties, 1993, when Maggie goes to Dublin in search of a missing Erin, and finally Maggie’s return to Dublin in 2016. Like real life, it’s complicated and messy: the narrative is infused with significant details and asides.

The abortive search for Erin changed Maggie’s life. Instead of pursuing academia (she had gone to “Notre Dame for English and focused on Irish Studies”), she returns to Long Island and tends bar. Maggie tells a fellow female detective, Griz, a member of the Gardaí, of the “frustration of not finding” Erin in 1993.

I wanted to know, you know? And it drove me crazy that we didn’t know. There were these two cops, detectives on the organized crime squad, and they came into my uncle’s bar all the time and I loved listening to them discussing their cases. I asked them how someone could become a detective, and it turned out that the academy was giving the test that summer. Like you, I just . . . jumped. It was hard when I was in uniform, when I had a baby. The fucking sexism. It’s better now, though. Too.” I smile. “The homicide squad is my place. I love it there.”

On Tuesday, May 24, 2016, at 3:04 a.m., Uncle Danny rings her cell, saying an Irish detective had called him.

“He left a message. On the phone here at the bar. It was just, ya know, ‘Mr. Flaherty, this is Detective Roland Byrne with the Irish police whateveryacallit, the Guards whatever.’”



“Garda Síochána.” I remember the pronunciation. Garda Shee-uh-cahna. Guardians of the Peace.



“Yeah. He just said I should call him as soon as I got the message.”



“Nothing else?”



“Nothing else. Whaddya think, Mags? Ya think they found her?” I can hear him starting to choke up. He has high blood pressure, a failing heart. I can’t let him get too worked up.

Maggie calls up Detective Roland “Roly” Byrne. He reassures her there are no remains, just a scarf, “printed with butterflies.” Maggie knows the scarf, she had given it to Erin for Christmas. Just like twenty-three years earlier, Maggie absorbs her uncle’s despair and agrees to go to Ireland on his behalf and her own.

Maggie recalls the months she spent in Ireland in 1993, when she fell into Erin’s world as best she could, tracking down clues and leads…and falling in love with a city and perhaps one inhabitant.

I had come to love Dublin at night. It wasn’t romantic, exactly, not Paris or even New York. When I think of Dublin now, I think of empty stretches of sidewalk, skittering leaves at dusk, sideways rain. Lights on the Liffey. The looming darkness of the Dublin mountains on one side and the wide emptiness of the sea on the other. The sudden burst of sharp yeasty warmth that hit you when you got inside the door of a pub.

Readers might be forgiven for thinking police investigations in Ireland run on Guinness.

The Maggie who returns to Dublin in 2016 is a gifted profiler, able to internalize massive amounts of information and sort it out into patterns; to triangulate. That’s the expertise she brings to the re-opening of Erin’s case and a recent incident. Niamh Horrigan, a twenty-five-year-old teacher disappeared in the same area where Erin was last thought to be. Can Maggie’s expertise make a difference this time?

Dublin is different too, awash in money, although not every boat has been lifted by the rising tide of high-tech commerce. Roly picks Maggie up at the airport and takes her to her hotel.

There are new buildings, a new bridge, shaped like a harp. But then I see Trinity and the bottom of Grafton Street and I get my bearings again before we turn. “You should see her old neighborhood,” Roly says. “It’s all Facebook and Google offices down there.”

Omnipresent in The Mountains Wild is the treacherous countryside where Erin was thought to have disappeared. Other young women lost their lives there too. The mysterious mountains were the site of ancient skirmishes and battles, and secret religious rituals in days gone by. Maggie feels their significance in 1993, when she hiked in with Emer, one of Erin’s roommates.

The clouds crowded in around us: I had the sense of the looming shapes of the mountains ahead of us and all around us, but I couldn’t see them through the mist. The woods got thicker as we went. We were back in a fir tree plantation now and there was something menacing about the uniform shapes of the trees, the way they reached toward the sky. When I turned around, I could no longer see the road. We were all alone in the woods.



Where are you, Erin?

Taylor explores how childhood and our twenties inform and shape our entire lives, albeit with red herrings galore. The Mountains Wild is the first of a new series. Criminal profiler Maggie D’arcy is a believable, dogged guide to despicable behavior. Long ago, Uncle Danny gave the girls a template for sorting out sheep from goats: “there are two kinds of people: people who live in their own skin and people who wear their skin like a costume.” An older, wiser Maggie understands that people who had an agenda were either to be avoided—or apprehended by the Gardaí or the police, depending on which side of the Atlantic one is on.

From my blog: Always With a Book:

As soon as I as heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. There are just so many things that immediately appealed to me right from the start - police procedural, the settings of Long Island and Ireland, and the fact that it is the start of a new series. Well, it completely exceeded all my expectations and then some...I loved this book!

I fully admit that this cover completely hooked me - it totally evokes the atmospheric nature of the book. And luckily the story itself captivated me right from the start. I loved that it was told all from one character's point of view - that of Maggie, who is such a great character. We see the mystery unfold layer by layer, alternating back and forth in time. It is full of richly developed characters that round out the story and quite a few times I thought I had everything figured out only to be completely blind-sighted at the end. The twists and turns are expertly thrown in so that you think you know where things are headed, but then a new clue arises to turn it all upside down.

I loved learning about the relationship that Maggie had with Erin. The little snippets we get from the past when they were young provided clues about Erin and just how troubled she really was. I also love that we get details about Maggie herself - we learn a little bit about why she became a detective and find out about the major case that made a name for her. This case, didn't quite have the ending she wanted and I wonder if it will be revisited again in future books?

This book kept me glued to the pages and the further I got into the book, the harder it was to put down. It's not so much a fast-read as it is a captivating one, where you become so engaged in what is going on that you just need to keep reading. This is more of what I would classify as a character-study than a plot-driven book and I really found that I was fascinated with the way Maggie's mind worked. She truly is a fascinating character and I hope she is the focus of the series, but I guess that is to be determined.

I loved this book and as a series debut I look forward to seeing where things go from here. All I can say is I am all in and will be anxiously awaiting the next book!

This book is advertised as being for fans of Tana French, and while I love Tana French's The Dublin Murder Squad and can that the only similarities here are that they both take place in Dublin and involve a murder. With that said, I still absolutely loved this murder mystery/thriller.
The Mountains Wild, is an atmospheric thriller about a Long Island homicide detective named Maggie D'Arcy who returns to Ireland twenty-three years after the unsolved disappearance of her beloved cousin Erin in the Wicklow Mountains. When a young woman disappears and new evidence from Erin’s case is found, Maggie will have to uncover the truth about the Irish man she's never stopped loving and, in order to help Irish police save the missing woman, the truth about who Erin was and what happened to her.
I really loved the way this story was told. There are 3 POV's all from Maggie. The first is from 1993 when her cousin Erin first goes missing. The second takes place in modern day (2016) when a new clue into Erin's murder pops up and leads Maggie back to Ireland. The last is Maggie's memories. At first I thought I could do without the third POV, but as I went through the book I found the extra memories and commentary to help with the plot of the story and to get a good look into the lives of the two cousins.
There is a ton of character development in this story as well. Even though we only learn about Erin through Maggie's memories, I still felt that I could feel Erin's evolution. Besides Erin's growth, Maggie grows so much more but more with just coming to terms with her cousin being gone and the resentment she feels for her last words to Erin. The complex relationship between the two cousin is very unique and makes for an interesting experience, especially since they tend to be similar to a sister relationship but with a slight twist.
Overall, this mystery is a true murder mystery and really kept me guessing until the end. Either I'm getting bad at guessing endings or the last two thrillers I've read, which includes this one, had the plot so well lined up that it was almost impossible to guess whodunnit. Definitely recommend for mystery lovers but also though wanting to learn a bit more about the relationship of Northern Ireland to Ireland during the end of the 20th century.


I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on The Mountains Wild. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof_books. Huge thank you to Minotaur Books for my copy!

I love this book! I have read and really enjoyed all four books in the Sweeney St. George series and was so excited to see another book by Taylor coming out.

It was a well-written story of family and grief and loss and perseverance and understanding and redemption. Maggie D'arcy is a homicide detective in Long Island. 23 years ago, her cousin Erin went missing in Ireland. Maggie receives a call about new evidence that has come to light and she travels to Dublin to help with the investigation.

I enjoyed the dual time lines - 2016 and 1993. I also really liked how the author slowly revealed the truth in a way that was believable and real rather than just as a way to maintain suspense. The characters were great - complex and well-drawn.

Way too predictable for me. The premise was good. Could have done without all the lengthy flashbacks of Erin. Overall I was just disappointed to figure out the plot in an early chapter. Not much to work for.

The writing style sure does aim for Tana French but misses the mark.

The Irish setting of Sarah Stewart Taylor's The Mountains Wild is wonderful, but although I did enjoy the setting and the main character of strong, determined Maggie D'arcy, that's about all that I did enjoy.

The story needed tightening, and the plot didn't hold any real surprises for me. Due to something Erin did as a small child, I couldn't even drum up much sympathy for her or the desire to have her found. All in all, my response was decidedly lackluster, but your mileage may certainly vary.

I've been trying to take comparisons to Tana French with a chunk of salt the size of, well, this book. Throw in Kate Atkinson, too, and you've created so much angst in me.... I want to believe (who doesn't want to believe?) but year after year and book after book it's simply not true (because of course it isn't), and so (intellectually, anyway), I try to approach these books with an understanding that the publisher is simply trying to draw in the French and Atkinson fans (here I am! hand raised!), and it's not the fault of the author, and I must temper my expectations and go in knowing that there must be elements on which they're basing these comparisons and expect that it can all go wrong (and it has) or that I can appreciate the novels for their own strengths.

And then also, we're dealing with the reality that while I was attracted to this one on it's own merits, like the synopsis, there's a likelihood that the French/Atkinson comparisons influenced my decision to request the Netgalley from St. Martin's/Minotaur when I hadn't requested an ARC for months.

And that got my foot in the door for a novel I throughly enjoyed. It's not French, and it's not Atkinson, but it does remind me of earlier Atkinson; of the the before-Brodie books, which is interesting since this is a crime/procedural more along the Brodie lines. It seemed clear to me that Stewart Taylor knows her locations (Long Island/New York and Dublin/the Irish countryside), and I wasn't surprised to read her bio that she's lived in both places. However, it's certainly not in an intrusive way. She cleverly weaves placenames and landmarks in with the sensations and memories of a place. I've been to Dublin, and though it's been a long time (and she described both current-day Dublin and also past Dublin, almost precisely in time when I visited), her immersion in the city took me right back to my own experiences.

There were a couple of elements that might've dipped it slightly below four stars for me, if we were working on that sort of meticulous system here, but it would be so incremental, it's not worth the quibble. (view spoiler) And while I enjoyed the jumping back and forth in time (this isn't one of those novels where the times are a hundred years apart and different characters - the time periods are all contained within the protagonist's experiences), something felt too lightweight there. Not sure what - not quite balanced, or some edited bits that might've been left in?

I enjoyed this quite a bit. Just enough doubts here and there to question the primary characters' motives. Just enough obfuscation at the beginning to wonder what the hell was going on with a particular situation, but not enough to build to annoyance at the author. The timelines, the settings, the mystery; all very well done. Stewart Taylor has a backlist of a cozy mystery series, which is a genre I tend to wholly avoid (with the sole exception of Alexander McCall Smith), and with my attraction to this one being based on the darker descriptions (and comparison to darker authors), I'm not sure I'd move backwards to check out that series, but I will most certainly keep an eye out for future offerings like this one. Can't wait!

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an e-copy of this book for my review. This is the first novel I have read by Sarah Stewart Taylor and I will definitely go back and read her previous books. I enjoyed the mystery plot and her descriptions of Dublin and the surrounding counties. I visited Ireland last year and was able to picture many of her landmarks. I am giving the books four stars because I found it be a slow read for about the first half. There were so many characters introduced that I had a hard time following and had to frequently look back for reference. The book picked up toward the end and the ending was a surprise.

I didn't see that one coming! No spoilers from me for this well constructed intricate tale of Maggie, who has been searching for her cousin Erin who disappeared in Ireland back in 1993. It moves back and forth between 1993 (with occasional flashbacks) and 2016, when Erin's scarf is found during a search for another woman who has gone missing. In the interim, Maggie became a detective on Long Island, married, divorced, and raised a daughter Lily into her teens. She's also thought about what happened when she went to Ireland to hunt in 1993. Among other things, Conor has lingered in her brain; they were deeply attracted to one another but Conor was holding something back. Taylor has incorporated Irish history and to some extent politics into the mx; she does an excellent job of making the complex accessible. Is there a serial killer? Did Erin simply walk off as she had throughout her life? Did she find her father? Why did she go to the particular place she was last known to be and why was she interested in mass stones. So many questions. These are terrific characters = Maggie leaps off the page, as does Roly and other members of the Garda, Erin does as well. The red herrings abound and as noted, I honestly did not guess what happened. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. An excellent read!

Several years ago I read Sarah Stewart Taylor's books and fell in love with her beautiful and lyrical writing....and my opinion hasn't changed. The Mountains Wild is in part a hauntingly beautiful portrait of Ireland and in part a top notch murder mystery. Told in dual timelines this book tells the story of Maggie D'arcy, a US detective, and her 23 year quest to find out what happened to her cousin Erin when she disappeared in Ireland all those years ago. The story moves between 1993 and 2016 with ease. Interspersed throughout are fascinating tidbits of Irish history. This is a great story with a "Wow.... I didn't see that coming" ending that ties every thing up for the reader.
Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sarah Stewart Taylor does an exceptional job of weaving a tale of mystery & suspense. I consider myself a pretty good guesser when it comes to figuring out the suspect(s) in mystery books, but I was completely stumped by this one. I loved how the story was told through alternating time periods and really loved Maggie’s character. This one had me hooked from the very beginning & I had a hard time putting it down. The ending had me completely shook! I did not see any of it coming & I really, really enjoyed it! This one easily gets 5 stars and is definitely one of my favorite mystery books of the year!

I got this copy of The Mountains Wild by Sarah Stewart Taylor from NetGalley as an advance reader's copy. I had a bit of trouble getting into it, it felt like the upward ride on a rollercoaster, but then came the rushing climax and twists and I was hooked.

Set in Dublin, Homicide Detective Maggie D'arcy is back when clues of her missing cousin, Erin, turn up. Erin disappeared over 20 years, along with several other woman, and when some personal belongings show up of Erin's, Maggie heads back to Dublin. The detectives are reluctant to allow Maggie to help with the investigation but eventually concede when the parents of the newest missing girl ask for her help.

We get to go back and forth, with Maggie and Erin's upbringing, Erin's volatile history and her decision to up and move to Dublin from Long Island, and Maggie's first trip to Dublin when Erin first goes missing.

Once Maggie is in the case files and starts uncovering missing information is where this really picks up. Her mind is stellar, as she puts two and two together and realizes what really happened. I think the saddest piece is where Maggie began believing that Erin was responsible for the other missing girls. Erin's history was tragic, indeed, and she made it hard for people to get close to her.

This is an excellent mystery, well worth taking the time to read.

"It's like there's a beautiful woman sitting in the room and no one can look away." I'll admit, I seized the opportunity to read The Mountains Wild because of the comparisons to Tana French. And I was not disappointed. There's a lot going on here, and a great twist at the end. You think things are connected, but they really aren't. I liked the characters of Maggie (Mags), Roly, Griz and Erin. At times, I felt as though I were drinking a Guinness in an Irish pub, walking the streets of Dublin and smelling the salt in the air on Long Island Sound. Maggie's haunted by the disappearance of her cousin, Erin, and becomes a detective in NY after a trip to Ireland doesn't bring her any closer to finding out what happened to Erin. When a scarf she gave to Erin turns up at the scene of another murder, 23 years later, Maggie heads back to Dublin, seeking closure for herself and her uncle Danny, Erin's father. I'll admit to being a bit confused by the time shifts, even though Stewart-Taylor dates her passages. Sometimes I had to flip back, to orient myself. A minor nit, for an otherwise excellent read.

P.S. Thanks to #NetGalley for the e-galley.

Title: The Mountains Wild
Author: Sarah Stewart Taylor
Genre: Thriller
Rating: 4 out of 5

Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D'arcy's family received a call from the Dublin police. Her cousin Erin has been missing for several days. Maggie herself spent weeks in Ireland, trying to track Erin's movements, working beside the police. But it was to no avail: no trace of her was ever found.

The experience inspired Maggie to become a cop. Now, back on Long Island, more than 20 years have passed. Maggie is a detective and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the Gardaí call to say that Erin's scarf has been found and another young woman has gone missing, Maggie returns to Ireland, awakening all the complicated feelings from the first trip. The despair and frustration of not knowing what happened to Erin. Her attraction to Erin's coworker, now a professor, who never fully explained their relationship. And her determination to solve the case, once and for all.

I was engrossed in this novel from the very beginning. I loved that most of it was set in Ireland, and the author managed to capture the unique beauty and charm of the country. The parts set in Maggie’s past were a bit frustrating, as she kept poking her nose into all sorts of things when she shouldn’t, but her determination to find her cousin was strong.

Excellent and evocative writing, with Ireland itself coming to life on the page, as well as the characters. I never did figure out who was behind it all, so I was just as surprised as Maggie with how it played out. Definitely a solid and thrilling read.

Sarah Stewart Taylor grew up on Long Island. The Mountains Wild is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review.)

Maggie D’arcy has spent years haunted by the disappearance of her cousin Erin. Erin’s unsolved disappearance while living in Ireland prompted Maggie to change her career path and she’s now a homicide detective. After two decades the family receives a phone call letting them know there has been new evidence discovered and that another young woman has gone missing in the same area where Erin disappeared. Maggie flies from New York to Dublin to help in the investigation and hopefully find out what happened to Erin all those years ago.

The documentation of the investigation is told by.alternating between both the past and the present. Maggie was in Ireland in 1993 shortly after Erin disappeared and she’s back in 2016 after new evidence has been found. The investigation of Erin’s disappearance is shared from both of those time periods. This switching back and forth between time periods could be a little confusing at times and disrupted the flow of the story somewhat. I also felt like Maggie’s romance with Connor was more filler than actually adding anything to the overall storyline.

When all is said and done, I thought it was a decent read but it just didn’t grab and hold my attention enough for me to give a glowing review. Is it worth reading? Yes. I’m sure there are many people who will really enjoy the book.

The Mountains Wild is an excellent police procedural mystery. The fact that the majority of the story occurs in Ireland gives bonus points. There is something dark and mysterious about this country. Maggie is a tough, no excuses American police woman searching for the truth about her less than boring cousin, Erin. Meeting all of the characters that are part of their lives was sometimes confusing but always intriguing. I especially enjoyed learning some Irish history. I will be looking for more books from this author!