Dimpna Wilde, the Dublin vet who returned to her rural home to star in the first County Kerry Mystery, graces the scene of yet another murder. SOME OF US ARE LOOKING focuses on a caravan of new age travellers, parked near a woodland Air B&B cottage, annoying the locals and keeping large dogs, and a parrot.
Chris Henderson is a senior man who complains about the caravan, but the two men and two women living in tight quarters are unabashed. One of them, Brigid Sweeney, brings an injured hare to be treated by Dimpna. Chris is also kind to animals, and shortly afterward, he is struck by a car as he tries to rescue foxes on the road. The car speeds off and the victim becomes the first death; whether accident or deliberate, no one is sure. That night, while most people are under thankfully dry skies watching a meteor shower, another death occurs, and this time there is no guessing. A macabre scene awaits Dimpna when she visits the woods.
Detective Inspector Cormac O’Brien heads the casework on the Dingle peninsula, but Detective Sergeant Barbara Neely has to take over much of the work for Cormac. His mother has just passed away, so he has to arrange the funeral, and there are other, more compromising reasons. This is a good reminder that the Guards, like the community they serve, are people with normal family responsibilities.
Dimpna previously gained our sympathy for family reasons also, as her father, Eamon Wilde, had to step down from running his clinic in NO STRANGERS HERE due to fast-advancing dementia, which is also featured to a lesser extent in SOME OF US ARE LOOKING. The action occurs over a short few days, but they are packed with incident, rumour, and shock. Nobody can believe that such evil came to the town of Camp near Tralee. The locals are apprehensive that a serial killer might be in their midst. I found the police procedural side well-considered, given the short staffing of a rural station, and the village gossip all too real. An enterprising reporter appears at just the right – or wrong – moment. I also love the animals threaded through the story, woofing or chirping in every chapter, or bleating in a woolly flock on the road as cars have to wait.
Popular crime writer Carlene O'Connor has improved on the first outing of her County Kerry series, and SOME OF US ARE LOOKING carries a haunting, claustrophobic feel of the rugged mountains and inward-looking villages. Dimpna Wilde will make more than a few friends.
In the powerful tradition of Ann Cleeves and Louise Penny, USA Today bestselling author Carlene O'Connor’s new Ireland-set series continues, bringing together complex characters with a focus on a female vet who returns home to the village where she grew up and must reckon with her past while untangling mysteries in the present.
In Dimpna Wilde’s veterinary practice, an imminent meteor shower has elevated the usual gossip to include talk of shooting stars and the watch parties that are planned all over Dingle. But there are also matters nearer at hand to discuss—including the ragtag caravan of young people selling wares by the roadside, and the shocking death of Chris Henderson, an elderly local, in a hit-and-run.
Just hours before his death, Henderson had stormed into the Garda Station, complaining loudly about the caravan’s occupants causing noise and disruption. One of their members is a beautiful young woman named Brigid Sweeney, and Dimpna is shocked when Brigid later turns up at her practice, her clothing splattered in blood and an injured hare tucked into her shirt.
Brigid claims that a mysterious stranger has been trying to obtain a lucky rabbit’s foot. Dimpna is incensed at the thought of anyone mutilating animals, but there is far worse in store. On the night of the meteor shower, Dimpna finds Brigid’s body tied to a tree, her left hand severed. She has bled to death. Wrapped around her wrist is a rabbit’s foot.
Brigid had amassed plenty of admirers, and there were tangled relationships within the group. But perhaps there is something more complex than jealousy at play. The rabbit’s foot, the severed hand, the coinciding meteor shower—the deeper Dimpna and Detective Sargeant Cormac O’Brien investigate, the more ominous the signs seem to be, laced with a warning that Dimpna fears it will prove fatal to overlook.
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