Published: July 3, 2018
Publisher: Penguin Books
Series: Cormac Reilly #1
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 400 (Kindle)
Synopsis:
It’s been twenty years since Cormac Reilly discovered the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling Georgian home. But he’s never forgotten the two children she left behind…
When Aisling Conroy’s boyfriend Jack is found in the freezing black waters of the river Corrib, the police tell her it was suicide. A surgical resident, she throws herself into study and work, trying to forget–until Jack’s sister Maude shows up. Maude suspects foul play, and she is determined to prove it.
Cormac Reilly is the detective assigned with the re-investigation of a seemingly accidental overdose twenty years ago–the overdose of Jack and Maude’s drug and alcohol addled mother. Detective Reilly is under increasing pressure to charge Maude for murder when his colleague Danny uncovers a piece of evidence that will change everything…
This unsettling small-town noir draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland, where corruption, desperation, and crime run rife. A gritty look at trust and betrayal where the written law isn’t the only one, The Ruin asks who will protect you when the authorities can’t–or won’t.
This is yet another attempt to fill the Cormoran Strike void, though The Ruin didn’t quite live up to my hopes. It was certainly not a bad book, perhaps just not what I expected. The lead character doesn’t quite feel like the lead since his role is drowning in precinct politics. Most of the actual investigation is done by the heartbroken girlfriend and the estranged sister of the victim.
The Ruin is set in Galway, though it starts off with a young Cormac Reilly going out to take a domestic disturbance call that ended up being a death investigation. Of the two young children involved, only the younger boy was adopted. The girl, Maude Blake, disappeared that night and wasn’t heard from again until two decades later right after her estranged brother was reported to have committed suicide. Certainly that was a coincidence.
Aisling, the deceased Jack’s partner, is riddled with guilty feelings and is trying to overwork herself to forget her loss until Maude confronts her and brings up the possibility that Jack was murdered instead. Focusing on this potential, though at first unlikely idea, Aisling begins to look for Jack’s missing cellphone to trace his steps leading up to his death.
All the while, DI Cormac Reilly is dealing with station politics. And it wasn’t even particularly interesting politics. Just some rumors about him, catty behaviour from his coworkers, and being repeatedly assigned to work on unproductive cold cases. Just when he thinks he’s getting a break, he gets – wait for it – another cold case. Though this time it’s looking into the death of Hilaria Blake, the first case he was ever involved in and it could tangentially be related to the situation with Jack.
Overall, this book was good and I thought it wrapped up in a very satisfying and climactic way. My biggest problem was that the characters just didn’t feel like they had all that much life to them. Reilly was a bit on the dull side and Aisling and Maude aren’t (as far as I know) going to be involved in further installments of this series. This was somewhat disheartening because while I LOVE a good mystery, I want the investigators to be interesting and have their own hopes and dreams outside of the investigation. I want some personality! The Ruin just didn’t have enough of that and I’m not sure I’m feeling compelled to continue the series at this point.
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