Detective Alana Mack is facing the challenge of identifying the human remains found in a crab pot.
Then she is attacked and left injured. Is it connected to the case?
Then a genetic discovery sends the case in several further directions.
Can she tir it all together before there are more murders?
Enjoyed this and have now read the first two in the series.

The third in the Alana Mack series and the best of the bunch for me.

Here Alana and her team are trying to identify the remains of a body that is found by a local fisherman in his crab pots while taking them in.

A really well told story that touches on some of Irelands dark past, the story is interesting and well plotted.

Alana juggles her personal life with her professional as she tries to unravel what’s going on, all from her wheelchair.
Some more back story about Alana adds more meat to the bone of her character, something that was somewhat missing in the previous two books as we didn’t really have an explanation as to how she ended up (relatively recently) in a wheelchair.

A lot of the setting for this book is in an area of Dublin that is only a few miles from me and which I’m very familiar with, so that added to my fondness for this book.

I think the series finally came of age in Cage Of Bones. It’s a really cracking read and if you’ve read the previous two then you are in for a real treat.

Many thanks to the publisher for the ARC through Netgalley.

Wow – absolutely loved it! Pitch perfect from start to finish, with great characters, a thrilling, tense investigation and a very satisfying conclusion. Detective Alana Mack is wonderful – I love the way the story delves into the clashes between her private and professional lives. The situation feels so authentic and convincing. Her back story’s fascinating and her colleagues are all brilliantly realised too. I feel as though I know them and I’m missing the book now I’ve finished it. I can’t wait to read whatever Jenny O’Brien writes next.

I am a sucker for a really great police procedural and Jenny delivers every time.

I've read all 3 Alana Mack books and I have enjoyed them all thoroughly. This book is probably my favourite so far. It is detailed, intelligent, intriguing, fast paced, thrilling and impossible to put down.

The characters feel more like family with each book, and William and Wally have a special place in my heart.

I highly recommend this book if you're a fan of police procedural thrillers. Or if you like dogs, or you like fishing. Or if you were born on a day of the week that ends with "y"....

Third in the series about Detective Alana Mack. A body is found in a crab pot, discovered by a fisherman. Then the man's brother is discovered to be missing, although it was not his body found. Decent continuation of a good series. 4 stars.

Cage of Bones is the third book in a series of three, and while I'm sure much can be gained by reading them in the correct order, the fact that I hadn't read the previous two books did not detract from my enjoyment of this absorbing crime-thriller.

The Story: When Barney Mulcahy pulls his crab pots on board his fishing boat, he is shocked to find not crabs but human bones. Detective Alana Mack and her team are tasked with identifying the remains and the killer in this fast-paced police procedural.

Whilst investigating this case, Detective Mack is made aware of another case in Kerry, this time a disappearance, but with a link to Barney Mulcahy.

As the story continues there are more murders which can be linked to the initial case. Also, Detective Mack is mugged outside her home and loses her phone. Later, when she is assaulted by the same shadowy figure, she wonders whether someone is trying to stop her from getting to the truth.

I was quickly hooked and questioning the whys and wherefores of each murder as they arose, trying to solve the crimes. I did manage to identify the murderer, although I was not convinced by the motive, about which I had my own ideas.

I was also interested in Detective Mack’s team of detectives who worked well together. However, I wondered about Detective Sergeant Barry's unilateral decision to add Detective Eve Rohan, AKA ‘The Nun’, to Mack’s team as Rohan did not seem like a good fit for the team and came across as a rather ‘difficult’ individual.

A lot of research has gone into the production of this well-written novel which enhanced my enjoyment of the story. I was particularly interested in the Bonaparte genealogy programme, the DNA matching software, used by Interpol.

All in all, I would say that this is another enthralling and thought-provoking read from Ms O'Brien, and one which I would not hesitate to recommend.

This is such a good read, so believable and very well written. We get to know more about Alana’s team and see how they work so well together. The plot is complex and intriguing, at times a bit gruesome, but then murder is. I like the addition of Wally to the dynamic, and the way William is blossoming into a good character and an even better detective. It’s nice to see a new character, Eve, even though she doesn’t seem to fit in very well. Leo is changing too, we see a softer side of him and he doesn’t seem to quite so much of a tyrant. We also get to see how vulnerable Alana is and how she has to take more help than she really wants. An excellent read, and whilst it can be read on its own, to get the best out of it you,really need to have read the previous books.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Cage of Bones by Jenny O'Brien Book 3 of the series with Detective Alana Mack is suspenseful and intriguing. The case has many layers and Alana and her team work well together in finding the culprit(s). William and Wally are interesting and unique members of the team. Alana is a unique leader with her compassion, skill and determination while working through the limitations of her disability. Looking forward to reading about more cases and Alana and team.
Thank you to Jenny O'Brien, Storm Publishing , and Netgalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

The characters in this are just that! Full of character, life, oddities and this made them very real. The irritation of colleagues and the boss interfering alongside the support of those who care was a great juxtaposition in the book. The murders themselves were clever and this kept the book moving along at pace and bouncing between bodies and clever forensics. In the end it is good old fashioned police work that unravels what is going on and the book is the better for it. A clever read that I enjoyed immensely.

Cage of Bones makes a refreshing change for me to read whilst leading strong female characters are common within thrillers I have never come across one like this. Alana the lead Detective and from whose pov the book is mainly given was instantly likeable and bery relateable. I found it enlightening to read a character with a physical disability in such a fundamentally important role within the plot.

I found myself also drawn to the supporting characters such as Rusty, Paddy and William. The fact young William really comes into his own during the investigation is really good aspect.

The story its self was strong and believable there were points I did look up and found them to be true so whilst this is fiction the author has obviously done their research on causes of death and procedure.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definately be wanting to read more from this author. I would also look to recommend it to other readers on my tiktok channel.

Irish Garda Detective Alana Mack and her team based at Clonabee are given an impossible challenge of solving the case of who the bones belong to and then the disappearance of a man in Kerry. How are the cases connected? Why were they targeted? When were the crimes committed? Who is behind the incidents when Alana is attacked? The story is told over several time periods, which is tied in neatly with the story. I love how the characters interact with each other and how it shows as aa team working well together. All the sub plots within the story all lead to a surprising conclusion. I highly recommend this book.

Detective Alana Mack faces one of her greatest challenges when she begins her investigation into the human remains found in a local fisherman’s crab pot. DNA analysis of the remains from the victim reveal a connection to a local woman Ciara Buckley. However, Ciara claims that both of her parents died in a fire years ago when she was a child.
Soon after the fisherman’s estranged brother is found dead, Alana learns that they were adopted and left alone when their mother vanished. As Alena races against time to find the murderer she finds her own life in danger. Confined to a wheelchair, she is attacked and seriously injured, limiting her capability to continue her investigation. Someone is trying to stop her but despite the danger to her own life, she continues her desperate search to find the killer before there are any more murders.

Irish Detective Alana Mack has an odd case dropped on her as soon as she returns from holiday - human bones in the bottom of a crab pot. She and her team have a hard task trying to establish who this was and how they may or may not fit with other attacks on family members of the fisherman who brought up his pots. Lots of forensic evidence, mostly around DNA. Horrific case going back to the days when young pregnant "naughty" women/girls were sent off to the nuns to have their babies who were then taken away for adoption to a "proper" family. No questions asked. There is also child abuse, runaways, revenge, murder, liquorice and what not. Plenty of suspicious characters, attacks on Alana as she returns home (never did really work out who that was but then I did skip read some parts). She has a good and supportive team although the new Eve is somewhat of a trial and a very bright brain, Her boss mellows, William is a star and she has a few strange relationships, not least that of ex husband who seems to have been abusive, caused her to fall downstairs with serious injuries hence she's now a paraplegic, but whom she calls when attacked as the only person whose phone number she can remember. This may have been explained more in the previous books. 3.5* rounded to 4* because of Wally! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Thank you to the author, publisher and netgalley for an arc. This is the third book in the Detective Alana Mack series and the books just get better and better. It's a fast paced, intelligent and thought provoking mystery that kept me guessing until the end. Loved getting more insight into Alana's background and why she's now in a wheelchair. Hopefully won't be too long until we meet up with her and her team again.

Alana is a fantastic character and the story, told mostly from her viewpoint turns out to be so much more than a collection of bones in a crab pot!
The story is full of small insights into the characters without ever losing focus on the main storyline and works well at drawing you into their worlds.
A great read!

Alana continues to be a formidable detective solving some impossibly interconnected web of mysteries, discoveries and murders. Reminiscent of Jeffery Devers Lincoln Rhyme series, you have a detective with a brilliant mind, but physically incapacitated, with a team of clever individuals all working together to solve the mystery.

A great fast paced read, keeping you on your toes until the very end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for the ARC! In Cage of Bones, human bones turn up in a crab cage. While the detectives are working to identify the remains, other people are being murdered or attacked. This is told primarily from the detective’s point of view and reminded me of an Irish version of Law and Order. I have not read the first two books of this series, and I feel like I would have cared about and understood the characters a little more if I had not jumped into book 3. However, it was still a good read and stood well enough on its own.

4* Solid tale, solid detective work, with a few eye-rolling bits, but a good read.

This is a first for me - a female detective in a wheelchair. It's book 3 in a series, with enough hints and clueing-in that I wasn't lost despite not having read the others.

It's a well-written, plausible tale with at the very start a host of seemingly non-linked events and characters that take a sinister turn, but there's also rather obvious points for cops and SOCOs to have considered, that they didn't, leading to a few eyerolls, and praise for a young male cop that I liked seeing from an older, more experienced cop. Most of the cops had each other's back but there was a divisive one who seemed to get people's backs up, and she seemed parachuted in without us getting the full reasons as to why. By the end of the tale she'd mellowed a tad, or seemed a little less self-important, but I couldn't really see her presence as necessary. Maybe it's to introduce a plot in a future tale?

Whilst the twists and reveals worked, parts seemed a little implausible and not by official police procedure, so I wasn't convinced by the bad guy/s or by the person who'd seemingly been targeting Alana. All did tie in in the end, but things dragged out a little. Still, it's a very good read and I'm up for more.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Storm Publishing, for my reading pleasure

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The third in the Detective Alana Mack series, a ‘Woman Called Ironside’ if you like and go that far back.
I love the idea of a detective in a wheelchair, I can’t imagine the issues that you would come up against, especially when visiting a scene of crime. I would love to see this explored more and how these difficulties are overcome.
A very strong beginning and a plot that headed off into an unexpected but fascinating direction.
A strong sense of team dynamics and the effect have having a dog on the team is very well written.
This is a decent crime thriller and a series which I am really enjoying, I may not be having a crab sandwich for the foreseeable future…..
Thanks to Netgalley and Storm Publishing for providing me with an Advance Reader's Copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Thank you to Storm Publishing and Netgalley for an arc of Cage of Bones. A brilliant and powerful thought provoking crime thriller.
As the last pot breached the surface of the water, the fisherman's anticipation curdled to dread. No crab clattered within – inside the cage, where his catch should have been, was a pile of human bones.
When the bones of a victim are found in the bottom of a crab pot, the bizarre case proves to be Detective Alana Mack’s toughest yet. She and her team must rely purely upon forensic clues to identify the elderly woman’s remains. As Alana negotiates the complex web of genetic links at the heart of the case, she finds herself the target of a seemingly random attack. Or is it?
This is my first book reading by Jenny O'Brien and what an amazing read. She had me hooked in from the very beginning with the discovery of bones in a fishing pot on the first page. I loved how this story was so interwoven with all her rich and colourful characters and Detective Alana Mack is a great character, she's feisty, no-nonsense and has a brilliant mind. I love how the author has you invested early on with all the characters in this story with an intricate plot, great back stories and the best was not being able to guess who the murderer was.
I was extremely impressed with the author's research for all things to do with crime, murder scenes, DNA and timelines.
The plot itself albeit intricate and cleverly spun does not leave you feeling out of your depth, O'Brien makes it easy to follow along with the story, it's not too fast paced that you miss anything.
I am so excited to now go and read the other books featuring Detective Alana Mack.
Kerry Kennedy Author