Travelog By Jenny Wilson O’Raghallaigh
In the voice Jonah Smith, an American student and character in MANDATORY REPORTING, A Dublin Mystery
It turns out there is an art to picking the right pub for the right moment. I’m living in Dublin now, with twins from Tipperary who have spent the majority of their bachelor’s degrees perfecting their expertise on the quality of pints, the quality of authenticity, the quality of the finer sex present, and the ease of proximity to the pubs in this town. I’m not sure what their grade point averages are, but I’ve never spent an evening with them that didn’t feel right.
At first, I thought they drank too much. Then I realised that they didn’t always drink a lot in each venue—they just drank the right thing. In some pubs, like the Stag’s Head, where we went for our first drinking session together, you must drink Guinness. But in other pubs-which-cannot-be-named, the quality of the Guinness is such that you should probably switch to Smithwick’s, Five Lamps, Murphy’s, or if in complete desperation, something German or American. If you don’t mind the side glances you could have a cider, or if, like me, you don’t want to have to negotiate your way to the bathroom every half hour, you could switch to whiskey.
There is also, of course, the tourist-to-local ratio which is directly proportional to the level of antique items of Irish heritage hanging from the ceiling. If you look up, and there is an old bike with a basket on it hanging above you, you can be sure the couple sitting next to you are from at least 3000 miles away. Any sign of olde worlde measuring apparatuses or anything that looks like it may have warmed a bed in a big house of the 18th century, and you can count on the barman being suspiciously friendly and the bathroom having soap. On the other hand, if there is nowhere to sit but cracked leather benches and carpet covered stools that migrate around the perimeter of the drinking area likes boats hoping to find a port, you’re getting close. If despite the fact that indoor smoking has been outlawed in pubs since 2004, the fug of cigarette and sweat wafts gently from the pores of the surroundings you are in, you may have found the elusive thing that is the Dublin local.
But if romance is what you are after, a local may not be the place to head. It makes more sense to hunt a bit further out, in case you accidentally trip over the women you’ve already disappointed. The last thing you want is somebody you are trying to charm glancing over your shoulder to see an audience of bemused sisters who know better. Not that the twins know much about romance, or whatever passes for that in their experience, but they do like to drop me in these settings and see what happens.
It's a year away from home. Away from looking after my brain-injured mother, from the guilt that haunts me from the accident that killed my sister, and from the crushing responsibility of being the good kid, the survivor, the success. So what if I’m spending my time crashing from one crisis to another, trying to negotiate all the nonsense of my over emotional classmates and soothing myself in the arms of a Dublin artist. It’s my year and I just need the break. And luckily I have these twins to show me how to forget.
Debut author Jenny Wilson O'Raghallaigh is sure to stun readers in this page turner of a psychological thriller
Jonah is in way over his head. His study abroad year in Dublin isn’t going as planned: instead of the engineering program he requested, the only option available to him is a course in psychology. Rather than the predictable world of numbers, he is forced into the complicated and unpredictable world of human emotions and actions—exactly where he doesn’t want to be.
In therapy with an enigmatic doctor, fumbling to acclimate to a new country, and plunged into the quicksand of family mental health alongside a beautiful but troubled clinic supervisor, Jonah begins to unravel. How can he help others navigate the murky depths of family trauma when he’s still fighting to survive his own?
And then, someone dies.
Jonah is caught in the complex and unfamiliar web of relationships at the core of the Irish experience. He has the familiar feeling of being watched, carefully. The familiar feeling that he is to blame. Did he reveal too much to his therapist? Has his work at the clinic enraged a violent father?
As the Irish police begin to investigate, is Jonah now the prime suspect?
Thriller Psychological [Seventh Street Books, On Sale: October 15, 2024, e-Book, ISBN: 9781645060871 / ]
About Jenny Wilson O'Raghallaigh
Jenny Wilson O'Raghallaigh is an American clinical psychologist who has been living and working in Dublin, Ireland, for many years. Her writing was short listed for the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger and she was a winner in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair.
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