I love Cora Harrison's series about a lady Brehon Judge
living in the Burren region of west Ireland, when times
were slower and murder demanded, if not retribution, at
least compensation. With A SHAMEFUL MURDER we come forward
several centuries and take a new direction, to southerly
Cork City and the life of a nun.
Cork suffers from serious flooding even today, with traders
sanguine about shop refitting and lost profits. But how
hard must life have been during the floods of the past?
Built on islands and marshes around a harbour at the mouth
of the River Lee, Cork suffers both from rainfall events
and high tides. Reverend Mother Aquinas finds a dead girl
during just such a flood, in 1923. The good lady teaches
schoolchildren in the hope that they will find work in
shops. The city has seen turbulent times of late, with the
War of Independence causing a whole shopping street to be
burnt down by occupying soldiers, followed by the tragic
Civil War. Her pupils can't benefit from any wealth in the
country. Patrick Cashman, a former pupil and now a Civil
Guard, attends the body and observes that the dead young
woman was well dressed, with satin gown, kid gloves and an
evening bag. How did a merchant's daughter end up dead in a
drain?
I enjoy seeing horse power, lamp lighters and the Cork
Examiner newspaper create a great sense of time and place.
A sharp-eyed young woman reporter sees plenty of detail,
determined that this not be passed off as a Republican
killing. Georgian houses and their wealthy occupants show
up the affluent side of the trading city, while children
scavenge and beg for food. Mother Aquinas can't right all
social wrongs, but maybe she can make the guilty person
answerable for the death of Angelina Fitzsimons.
Buildings on our tour include the courthouse and an insane
asylum where even wealthy women are confined for an
addiction to laudanum (opiate). There's also a cowshed
where Republicans hide out with their new Lee-Enfield
rifles. If you want a virtual tour of Cork City's past you
could hardly do better. The sights, sounds and smells will
drag you to the sewers and twirl you through the salons.
Cora Harrison lives on the Burren and has written about
Jane Austen as well as Irish history tales for young
readers. With her new Reverend Mother Aquinas series she
has begun a splendid new journey and this first installment,
A SHAMEFUL MURDER, has to be called a triumph.
Introducing the Reverend Mother Aquinas in the first of a
brand-new historical
mystery series.
Cork, Ireland. 1923. When, one wet March morning, Reverend
Mother Aquinas
discovers a body at the gate of the convent chapel washed up
after a flood ‘like a
mermaid in gleaming silver satin’, she immediately sends for
one of her former
pupils, Police Sergeant Patrick Cashman, to investigate.
Dead bodies are not unusual
in the poverty-stricken slums of Cork city, but this one is
dressed in evening finery; in
her handbag is a dance programme for the exclusive
Merchant’s Ball held the previous
evening – and a midnight ticket for the Liverpool ferry.
Against the backdrop of a country in the midst of Ireland’s
Civil War, the Reverend
Mother, together with Sergeant Cashman and Dr Sher, an
enlightened physician and
friend, seek out the truth as to the identity of the victim
– and her killer.
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