A DISTANT GRAVE by Sarah Stewart Taylor
This is the second book in the Maggie D’arcy police series, with all the ingredients that appeal to me: female homicide detective, smooth prose, and an international angle. In this case, it’s
Ireland.
If I was giving a rating, Maggie and company would get an almost perfect score. Not perfect? I’ll tell you why at the end.
Single mother Maggie D’arcy is a cop on Long Island, about an hour east of New York City. She and her teenaged daughter are still coping from tragedy,
including the suicide of her estranged husband, but they also have an upcoming holiday in Ireland to look forward to. Not only does Maggie’s boyfriend live in Dublin but she has roots in Ireland.
A body is found in a marina on Long Island, not far from the home of an important local official. At the morgue, the dead man is found to have strange scars across his back.
Maggie is able to identify the man as an Irish aid worker, known for his efforts in war zones, including Afghanistan. She’s able to combine the investigation into his death with her holiday, working with Irish law enforcement.
Plenty of red herrings here, and introduced very effectively, including a criminal who may or may not be
stalking Maggie and the plight of pregnant single women in Ireland in the 1960’s. (Watch Philomena starring Judi Dench for a full account). Plus there’s the local politics angle. Would the local official resort to murder to prevent a family secret from becoming public?
Then there are the odd scars, the result of being held hostage while on an aid mission to Afghanistan? The hostage situation
is told in flashback scenes from the dead man’s point of view in which the hostages tell each other stories while waiting for the ransom to be paid.
The scenes in Ireland are lovely. Cultural details and historical facts are woven into the narrative without feeling like a tour guide data dump. The killer remains out of sight and completely unknown until the very exciting end.
Bottom line: I really liked Maggie, the writing style, and the drip-drip-drip of clues.
Unfortunately, Taylor is an “ivory tower author” who apparently lacks the real world experience of places/people/events they aim to fictionalize. As a result, there’s a lack of authenticity in A DISTANT GRAVE that borders
on the ridiculous.
For example (spoiler alert) the mujahedin who kidnapped the aid workers in the middle of a war (not really mentioned) and held them ransom for money are portrayed as misunderstood, starving men who don’t hurt their hostages but hold them in a pretty blue house. Indeed, the hostage who is ritually cut (for unknown reasons) laughs about it later. I doubt that any of my colleagues
who served in Afghanistan, in genuine life-and-death situations, would find any of this realistic.
Pitted against this misunderstood band of gentle kidnappers is a US contractor who disrupts the idyll, and makes the hostages watch (for unknown reasons) as he murders all the kidnappers. Six years later, he stands to get a plum position in the Trump administration, so this monster decides to kill all
the hostages before they can speak out and deep six his appointment. A nuanced character.
Simply put, there were too many unbelievable elements in A DISTANT GRAVE.
But that’s just me. You decide for yourself.
