Julia Harte is both a serving and a retired Garda in this thriller, as we follow her through two timelines. The young married woman, still having to push against a male bias in 1994 Ireland, runs up against a serial killer who strikes during THE DARK HOURS.
A book featuring Ireland gets my vote, but this one is unreservedly gory and the blood seems to follow Julia around. I had to take a break a few times and go do something more cheerful. Ireland has not had a large number of serial killers, but you wouldn’t know that by reading crime fiction.
The 2024 timeline is interspersed and Julia has much the same voice, though complaining about being retired and still feeling haunted by the events caused by James Cox, the serial killer who has recently died in a mental asylum. A copycat killer seems to awaken and the Gardas summon back Julia, who gained academic success with her books on criminology, to help them resolve the issue. To tell the storylines apart, the past is set in the past tense and the present day in the present tense. It’s an interesting literary solution.
We don’t get to know too many other people, as Julia is supposed to be off duty quite early in the tale, and spends a lot of time with grieving widows and parents, who are obviously not going to be a big feature in the modern section. Since we’d been given some present case details, I started watching everyone around the original case to see if one might be the past or the modern killer. I’m not saying if this was the right course or a red herring.
Mainly, I would have liked less of people being mired in grief, however laudatory it is to concentrate on the victims’ families, and more of a comparison between Ireland of thirty years ago and today. More computers would seem to be the main difference. This author Amy Jordan has concentrated on the crime in her first novel THE DARK HOURS, set mainly around Cork. She has been a civil servant and a tutor at Munster Technological University. I’m sure she’ll have an interesting future, especially if she turns to writing horror.
Her worst nightmare just returned—but this time she’s ready
1994: When Gardas Julia Harte and Adrian Clancy are called out to a sleepy housing estate in Cork to investigate a noise complaint, they are entirely unprepared for what they find. What happens next will haunt Julia for the rest of her career, leaving her plagued with nightmares and terrified of the dark. There is a serial killer at work in Cork, one as clever as he is deadly. Julia may not be a detective yet, but after the harrowing events of that night, she is determined to be the one to catch him…
2024: Julia Harte has chosen just the right place to disappear. Now retired, with an illustrious career behind her, she has moved to a tiny cottage in a remote part of Ireland, where she hopes to find peace. But then she receives a phone call from her old superintendent—two women have been murdered, their bodies marked and staged, just like in ’94.
It’s happening again. Only this time, the stakes are even higher. Julia must return to Cork to face a vicious killer and the memories that haunt her. Yet Julia is no longer a naive junior officer but a seasoned, tough professional who proves more than a match for any murderer…
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