BURIED IN A BOG by Sheila Connolly

It doesn't take long before Maura feels at home in a small village in County Cork, Ireland. After growing up in South Boston without a lot of money, she was surprised when her Gran asked her to visit Ireland with their last bit of money. She ends up getting more than she bargained for on a lot of counts: a murder mystery, and interesting people who knew her Gran with stories to share.

Connolly does a nice job of bringing the people and the landscape of the village to life. Maura soon finds herself a part of the community with a place to stay, a car to drive and a job pulling beers at the local pub. She's making friends and finds herself over her head in a mystery that involves a body in a bog and more contemporary mischief.

Connolly's personal history with Ireland and love of the land comes alive. Make sure to read the acknowledgements section to find out more. Connolly's knowledge and passion for Ireland make this story almost more one of self- discovery than of mystery. That said, I did have some quibbles with this new series starter. While Connolly flourishes with setting, the mystery is less engaging and practically nonexistent. Also, it takes a long time for anything to happen mystery wise.

The story has a strong cast of secondary characters including Maura's landlord, Bridget Nolan, Mick, and Rose, who looks to Maura as a big sister. I was charmed by the setting, and it made me want to visit Ireland, so I kept reading. Hopefully future books in this series won't need any more set-up, so the murders can start sooner. If you're looking for an interesting book set in Ireland, BURIED IN A BOG might work for you. But if you're looking for a strong cozy mystery, pass this one by.

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SUMMARY

EXCERPT

Maura Donovan checked her watch again. If she had it right, she had been traveling for over fourteen hours; she wasn't going to reset it for the right time zone until she got where she was going, which she hoped would be any minute now. First the red–eye flight from Boston to Dublin, the cheapest she could find; then a bus from Dublin to Cork, then another, slower bus from Cork to Leap, a flyspeck on the map on the south coast of Ireland. But she was finding that in Ireland nobody ever hurried, especially on the local bus. The creaking vehicle would pull over at a location with no obvious markings, and people miraculously appeared. They greeted the driver by name; they greeted each other as well. Her they nodded at, wary of a stranger in their midst.

She tried to smile politely in return, but she was exhausted. She didn't know where she was or what she was doing. She was on this rattletrap bus only because Gran had asked her to make the trip?just before she died, worn down from half a century of scrabbling to make a living and keep a roof over her granddaughter's head in South Boston. Now that she thought about it, Gran had probably been planning this trip for her for quite a while. She had insisted that Maura get a passport, and not just any passport, but an Irish one, which was possible only because Gran had filed for an Irish Certificate of Foreign Birth for her when she was a child. What else had Gran not told her?

And what else had she been too young and too selfish to ask about? Gran had never talked much about her life in Ireland, before she had been widowed and brought her young son to Boston, and Maura had been too busy trying to be American to care. She didn't remember her father, no more than a large laughing figure. Or her mother, who after her father's death had decided that raising a child alone, with an Irish–born mother–in–law, was not for her and split. It had always been just her and Gran, in a small apartment in a shabby triple–decker in a not–so–good neighborhood in South Boston.

Which was where Irish immigrants had been settling for generations, so Maura was no stranger to the Boston Irish community. Maybe her grandmother Nora Donovan had never shoved the Ould Country down her throat, but there had been many a time that Maura had come home from school or from work and found Gran deep in conversation with some new immigrant, an empty plate in front of him. She'd taken it on herself to look out for the new ones, who'd left Ireland much as Gran had, hoping for a better life, or more money. The flow had slowed for a while when the Celtic Tiger—the unexpected prosperity that had swept the country and disappeared again within less than a decade—was raging, but then it had picked up again in the past few years.

Maura suspected that Gran had been slipping the lads some extra cash, which would go a long way toward explaining why they'd never had the money to move out of the one–bedroom apartment they'd lived in as long as Maura could remember. Why Gran had worked more than one job, and why Maura had started working as early as the law would let her. Why Gran had died, riddled with cancer after waiting too long to see a doctor, and had left a bank account with barely enough to cover the last bills. Then the landlord had announced he was converting the building to condominiums, now that Southie was becoming gentrified, and Maura was left with no home and no one.

It was only when she was packing up Gran's pitifully few things that she'd found the envelope with the money. In one of their last conversations in the hospital, Gran had made her promise to go to Ireland, to tell her friend Bridget Nolan that she'd passed, and to say a Mass in the old church in Leap, where she'd been married. "Say my farewells for me, darlin'," she'd said, and Maura had agreed, although she had thought it was no more than the ramblings of a sick old woman. How was she supposed to fly to Ireland, when she wasn't sure she could make the next rent payment?