Ruined Abbey

This book has it all. Its a exciting thrill ride based in London of intrigue, family secrets and a criminal element. It is a pre quell to the previous release. Highly recommend for a fun read that holds this readers interest.

Ireland in 1989 was plagued with what is known as the Troubles. Like calling the American Civil War, the Late Unpleasantness, the Troubles was a euphemism for violence and hatred. Father Brennan Bourke hops the first jet to London from his home in New York when her hears his sister has been arrested. But the families problems are far from over, as cousin Conn is charged with killing a police officer and concocting a terrorist plot. When the partner of the murdered cop shows up, he makes it plain that he wants vengeance – an eye for an eye.

I remember my Irish grandmother and my English father (her son) talking about the distrust between people of both nations. For years, my dad refused to tell anyone he was half Irish, it wasn’t until just before he died that he began to talk of Ireland and all that he loved about it. Loyalties were, and still are, deeply divided between the two lands and Emery does a remarkable job bringing it to life in her books

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.
Note: This is a prequel to a series that I haven’t read. I plan on reading it now.

When Jimmy McNulty is going undercover as a John in the second series of the Wire, he takes the name Cromwell because the bastard, as he puts it, stole his family’s land in Ireland. Okay, his wording is a bit more colorful, but there it is. I always wondered how many Americans knew exactly what he was referring to. Most Americans knowledge of Irish Troubles seems facile at best, confused at worst.
Ruined Abbey does deal with the Troubles, from the perspective of three siblings whose family left Ireland because of them. Father Brennan gets word from his sister that the British police have arrested her because she might have links to the IRA, so he drops everything and with the help of his brother Terry, a pilot who gets some rescheduling time, flies off to London to lend a hand. What then follows is a mystery concerning the murder of a policeman as well as a plot to blow up an important London Landmark.
A really important landmark.
But what the book does, far more neatly and nicely than the actual murder plot, is present the conflict that has consumed Ireland and, to a lesser degree England, a conflict between the two countries. In part, this is because Molly, Brennan’s sister, has a very accurate knowledge of history, and her comments about Cromwell are ones that are not only historically accurate but ones that McNulty would likely toast. She serves, in part, to broaden the understanding or the view of the hatred that underlies, or underlay, the conflict between Ireland and England in general, and the whole battle over Northern Ireland in particular. The role of Molly isn’t simply that of the stereotypical woman who functions as a plot device. You know, of those women who is killed or attacked and, therefore is the reason for the male hero to seek revenge or justice. You see them everywhere, all the time. How many television and movie detectives in mysteries have a tragic murder story involving their wife in their past?
No, thankfully, wonderfully, Molly is so much more than that. Her passionate diatribes, rants, history lessons done in a way teachers should copy fulfill the function of making the history accessible to the reader who does not know it while at the same time not sounding like an info dump and being boring to a reader who does know the history.
Molly is also funny in that serious type of a way.
She also doesn’t have to be saved.
The real charm of the story isn’t the wonderful narrative that makes use of family history, national history as well as the stories and legends that come from both types of history (there are wonderful parts of the novel where it does sound like an Irish Bard telling the tale), no. Though that’s close. It isn’t the wonderful look at conflict and how it affects both sides, and how those on the ground actually make a peace that those above should note.
It’s the relationship, the sibling and family relationship at the heart of the novel. Brennan, Molly, and Terry all seem as if they could walk off of the page and take you out for a pint.
A Guinness of course.
You read because of that.

more enjoyable than i'd expected but i was completely drawn in by the voice - we are taken right into the ancient problems of Ireland in this family story, in fact, and a national crime story in its way - what i liked, even as the team of Collins and Burke got going who had some familiarity between them, and were impressive and canny - was the sense of family and its part in political fervour of Ireland no matter where the Irish are .. people read this with a sense of the long troubles there; and Brits do not come out v well - it makes an historical point too. Valuable and readable.