Sunday, 22 June 2025

The Missing

Dervla McTiernan's crime series continues with the third novel in the DS Cormac Reilly series, The Good Turn (2020). Picking up shortly after the events of the last novel, The Scholar (2019), Reilly continues to work at a Galway police station under the watchful eye of Superintendent Brian Murphy. Reilly suspects Murphy is corrupt and just needs to figure out how to prove it. 

The story gets off to a quick start when a young girl is kidnapped. Reilly's colleague Garda Peter Fisher has to make rapid decisions in a quest to find her. The station is under resourced with everyone else assigned to a potential drug bust and Fisher is on his own. When things go wrong, Fisher is reassigned to a tiny station in his childhood hometown. Reilly is suspended, freeing him up to investigate possible corruption. 

To make matters worse, Reilly's home life is unstable. His partner Emma has moved to Europe to take up a position in a lab and their long-distance relationship is under strain. Reilly knows he has to decide between Emma and the Garda, as Emma's career is now in Europe. 

McTiernan has added interesting layers to her characters. I enjoyed learning more about Fisher and his past in this novel, particularly his relationships with his estranged father and his beloved grandmother. Reilly too is evolving, trying to figure out what he wants from his life. 

The Good Turn is a page-turner with plenty of twists and turns to keep readers guessing. In this third outing, McTiernan has perfected her storytelling. She paces out reveals and I was interested to see the ways in which she brought various story threads together. The Good Turn can be read as a standalone novel, but it is far more interesting to read this series in order. 

The Reilly series continues in The Unquiet Grave (2025) which I hope to read soon. My reviews of other novels in the Cormac Reilly series are available on this blog:

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