Book review: Irish slow-burn mystery grips

In her Inishowen mysteries, Andrea Carter used a slow pace and Agatha Christie flourishes to investigate a series of polite murders in rural Donegal.
Very elegant they were too, but in this, her first standalone novel, she moves closer to home.
Ms Carter grew up in Ballyfin, Co Laois, and the Slieve Bloom mountains form an atmospheric backdrop to this eerie tale of trauma and absence.
Legal executive Allie Garvey lives in Dublin with her boyfriend Rory O'Riordan, a documentary-maker some 12 years her senior.
He's been down in Galway shooting a film, and Allie is perplexed when he fails to return home. After an anxious couple of days, she phones the police and a missing persons file is opened.
Rory was caught on CCTV using a toll in Ballinasloe, but thereafter vanished without a trace, leaving Allie and his family to fear the worst.
She's trying to digest this news when a Polish couple arrive at her apartment claiming Rory had leased it out to them.
She then finds out from Rory's solicitor that he has bought a rundown cottage in the Slieve Blooms: Evicted from her home and seeing no alternative, Allie moves to Co Laois.
Raven Cottage has been vacant for several years, the previous tenants having left in a hurry.
Locals say it's haunted, and Allie is initially spooked by a tribe of ravens that watch her from the trees.
At night time, she wakes at all hours convinced she's not alone, and is intrigued when she discovers that a supposed spirit medium called Eliza Dunne lived there in the 1890s.
In the local town, she befriends a cafe owner called Maggie, who turns out to be Eliza Dunne's great great granddaughter.
At the cottage, meanwhile, nocturnal happenings intensify, and then Allie is hit by another blow: Rory's car is found submerged off the end of a Mayo pier, and there's a body inside.
There Came a Tapping is told from two points of view, Allie's narration interrupted now and then by the more measured perspective of investigating Garda Suzanne Phelan, who quickly realises that Allie may not be a reliable witness.
She drinks wine in the afternoons, lives on her nerves, and is haunted by a car accident which killed her parents when she was in her teens.
Might Allie have killed Rory, Suzanne's partner Dave — a tubby misogynist — wonders aloud?
It seems unlikely: Rory was having money problems, and may not have been the perfect boyfriend he seemed.
Andrea Carter fleshes out her plot with supernatural elements and a kind of mystery within a mystery concerning Eliza Dunne, whose disappearance may also have been suspicious.
Her primary ambition here is to take us inside the mind of a woman short on confidence and plagued by misplaced guilt.
She does so reasonably well, and through the clumsy but well-intentioned interventions of her sister Olivia, we discover that Allie has endured a subtly controlling relationship.
The supernatural elements are nicely handled, leaving Allie's experiences open to interpretation — in fact I think I wanted more of them. But the plot sags a little in the middle, as Allie frets and not a lot happens.
Descriptive evocations of natural surroundings can greatly enhance dramatic tension, but here they are perhaps too perfunctory, and while a dramatic late plot twist is well concealed, I'm not entirely sure I bought it.
Still, Allie is an engaging protagonist, and the book's slow mystery kept me engaged until the very end.

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Irish Daily Mirror

2 days ago

• Irish Daily Mirror

'Churlish' Rory McIlroy next golf star to get book treatment from Alan Shipnuk

Phil Mickelson's biographer Alan Shipnuck is writing a book about Rory highly entertaining 'LIV and Let Die' chronicled the rise of the rebel golf tour, while his Mickelson tome 'Phil' lifted the lid on the divisive six-times major winner's career. The Californian author is fascinated with the life and times of the sport's newest Grand Slam winner and his book on McIlroy is due on the shelves in March 2026. "I've spent the last year thinking about Rory McIlroy because he's going to be my next book, and I'm probably 60% done," said the famed American writer. "I have many thoughts about Rory. It's been fascinating to watch this existential crisis he's going through since the Masters and everyone has a theory." Shipnuck revealed to the Indo Sport podcast that he had tried to involve McIlroy in the process but the 35-year-old didn't want to be interviewed specifically for the book. "It's going to be fun to read because I'm having fun writing it, that's always my test," he said. "As a writer you have to be your hardest critic but I've had a lot of fun writing it. He's had a big colourful life and has touched a lot of people along the way. "I said this to Rory, that the last two books I did were big and controversial but I'd like this to be a bit more fun and celebratory because I think there's a lightness to his being. I'm not getting sucked into the recency bias, I'm looking at the whole scale of his career and there's been a lot of joy there. It's going to be an intimate portrait. "We actually had a conversation in the parking lot in Oakmont on Sunday that was really fascinating. I've got to save it for the book but a lot of things were revealed, I'll say that, and it told me so much about Rory. It was very helpful for the book. "A huge part of the Rory brand is the down to earth or human superstar - and a lot of us hope he doesn't lose that because then he loses some of his appeal." After winning at Augusta for the first time in April, thus completing the fabled Grand Slam after a 14-year wait, McIlroy refused to talk to the media during the next major tournament - the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. He did a press conference ahead of the US Open at Oakmont last week but didn't talk again until Saturday, when he was uncharacteristically short with his answers and seemed fed up, although he perked up after his final round 67 as he looked forward to The Open's return to Portrush next month. "I think there's a few things going on and he talked about it, it's just the let down of chasing this dream," said Shipnuck. "But when Phil won the Masters in 2004 to break through after about a dozen years of being the best player with a major, and all the questions about him, that was as cathartic a win as Rory's was. "And Phil just kept going, he had his best year that year and came back and won majors the next year and the year after - you don't have to have a huge let down."Rory's an emotional player, just like Phil was, and I think he's just out of emotion. He just looks so flat on and off the golf course. This churlish version of Rory, is this the real Rory and for 18 years it's been this incredible facade and he was so widely admired and so classy and everyone admired him? "We thought that was the real Rory, but was that all pretend? It makes your head spin thinking about how much he's changed in such a short period of time." Shipnuck can't wait to see how McIlroy reacts to his Portrush return after the drama of his missed cut there in 2019. "I think Portrush is going to be fascinating, and he alluded to this as he was leaving Oakmont," he said. "Like, if he can't summon any energy or emotion to play The Open at Portrush, the course where he shot 61 when he was 16 and that really began his legend, and after what happened last time around when he made eight on the first hole and that incredible Friday when the entire island of Ireland was cheering him on to try to make the cut and the tears, if he goes back there and he just doesn't look like he's into it, then you really have to question what is this last act of his career going to look like. "Clearly it would have been better for Rory if the Masters was on in September and he could have just taken six months off. "I can't believe he's playing this week (at the Travelers) in Connecticut, why is he doing this to himself? Why is he putting himself through it? It's incredible. He just looks so miserable on the golf course and obviously it's affecting his play. "Portrush is just going to be fascinating theatre and if he can dig deep and find something if doesn't, I'm definitely concerned for what this means going forward." Shipnuck claimed that the emotional reaction to McIlroy's Masters triumph was less about the golf played than the appreciation of the Holywood man as a person, and how he has carried the burden of trying to complete the slam. "He had worn this burden and had let us into his heart and soul. That's why the Masters resonated so much," he stressed. "It's the way Rory has let us in that has made people so invested in his accomplishments - and his failures. "So it's been interesting to read on social media how people have quickly said, 'I'm kind of over this guy'. Eighteen years of goodwill, a lot of it has been incinerated in two months."He can get it back, of course, but there's been this sense of let down, it's almost taken away from some of the Masters win. The feelings we all had in April, they've been diminished and now there's these weird questions and weird energy. "It's totally self-induced, it just feels like it's not as much fun as it was. Rory made it fun to be a golf fan and it's less fun right now, and it's not good for anyone."

Irish Independent

3 days ago

• Irish Independent

Cork streets cultivated Rory Gallagher's musical talents, says brother Dónal

Rory Gallagher was born in Ballyshannon, Donegal, and spent his early formative years in the city of Derry, but it was Cork that gave the blues genius his musical upbringing. Living in the heart of the city, on McCurtain Street, Rory thrived off the city's up-and-coming music scene, and famously bought his 1961 Fender Stratocaster, reportedly the first in Ireland, at Crowley's Music Shop. 'Rory grew up in the heart of the city,' said Dónal, at the launch of a number of new initiatives to honour the musician at City Hall. 'We had been up and down, but this was the final stay. We lived in Sidney Park, then the Douglas Road, and then finally the Well Road. 'Coming from the north, Rory had opened his ears to a lot of music. When we were in Derry, it was where the Americans were based for the Second World War and stayed for the Cold War, so we would listen to American radio. 'Then, we came down to Cork, and you suddenly found that you were in one of the main streets of the city. The whole culture and internationalism of the city, because there was still shipping going on in Cobh. "We lived in a bar on McCurtain Street and got to know all the characters, of all sorts: educated men, dockers, whatever, right across the board. It was a very easy city then, and due to its size it was a nice urban place for Rory, who was already developing his songs, talent, and music, and could identify with what other cities were like. 'He was out on the streets.' Dónal, speaking right across the road from his very first school (the Model school, now the site of a courthouse), says that the city was extremely kind to both himself and his brother, who returned regularly to play concerts at the City Hall, which are woven into the city's lore by those who attended (as well as the many who claim to have!). 'It wasn't a bit intimidating, traversing the city over and back to go to school from McCurtain Street. On my mother's side of the family, there were tons of cousins – more than we had in Derry – so to have that was all good.' Dónal would act for many years as his older brother's right-hand man. A manager, and mentor, and carving a path few, if any, Irishmen had done before. However, it could have been so different if he had been a bit more sensitive in his youth. 'I got fired once by Rory for dissent on stage,' Dónal told the many amassed at City Hall to celebrate the launch of the campaign about some of Rory's earliest gigs. 'He'd gotten on so well that they had asked for an encore, so he asked me to come on stage and do my party piece, which was 'The Scottish Solder', because I could do the accent. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more 'I started off with the song, and Rory started to join in with the guitar. So I stopped and I said to him 'there's no guitar on this', so the next thing it was all over, at seven years of age I was fired!' 'Cork Rocks for Rory' is the first major attempt by the city to truly commemorate the life and times of a man who was counted by many of his peers as the best guitarist to walk the earth. Cork City Council have worked alongside members of the family, as well as Sheena Crowley in a number of events in memory of the former member of Taste, and successful solo artist, 30-years on from his death. While last weekend, the main roadway at Cork Airport was renamed 'Rory Gallagher Avenue'. 'All four corners of Ireland have Rory at their heart, and each town has its own story,' said Dónal. 'People of all races, creeds, and colour, see Rory as a model person. He was very modest, but who actually travelled the world and brought Irish music and culture as well. 'Even though he was playing rock and roll, his talent paved the way for Irish musicians thereafter. There had almost been a stigma that if you're Irish, you can't play modern music. When Rory broke down those barriers, people began to take Ireland more seriously and went to look at the talent in Ireland. 'And of course, they found a goldmine!' For that, Rory and indeed the city can thank Mike Crowley's decision to allow a young Gallagher to purchase the Stratocaster for £100 on credit, whose previous owner belonged to Jim Conlon, of the Royal Showband, who decided to sell the guitar because its colour wasn't exactly what Conlon had in mind. Mike's daughter Sheena, who remembers as a 16-year-old the then revered Gallagher coming into the shop regularly to talk tech with her Dad, was a key part of the success of the exhibition, attending the auction in Bonhams to purchase a number of items, and many prospective buyers backed off once they learned why she was present. 'You'd be on a high thinking about it really,' Sheena said at the launch. 'You'd be thinking about what my Dad must have been thinking, what Rory would be thinking, it's fabulous really. 'I'm absolutely buzzing,' said the owner of Crowley's Music shop, adding that she would like to soon scale up to a larger premises, having vacated their shop on McCurtain Street in August 2013, before reopening a new shop on Friar Street a decade later. Rory's nephew, Eoin, has now been living in Cork for the past 20 years, following in both his uncle's and father's footsteps, and has continued the family's impact on the city through over a decade's work in the arts, before focusing full-time on keeping alive his uncle's legacy. 'When you're born into a family where you have someone like Rory Gallagher, who's just your uncle starting out. When you become a teenager, you get into your own music, and then Rory died, and when you compare contemporary stuff, you see how great he was and the talent that he had. 'Newer generations are finding out about him and seeing the lineage that traces the music they like, all the way back to him, so there's always work to be done!' The new project has all taken place within a whirlwind four months, that saw constant collaboration between Eoin and City Council, in securing vital exhibits for the Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald's Park and in the atrium of City Hall, as well as a number of other exhibitions across the city, complimented by a 'Stompin' Ground' walking train, which acts as a permanent legacy, 'highlighting the places and streets that were Rory's stompin' ground' across Cork. 'Cork City Council have been absolutely fantastic in their help. It's been intense but everyone has worked extremely hard, and I'm very optimistic about the future in honouring Rory and his Cork roots. 'I think he would be extremely proud, especially in his hometown. He was a fantastic musician, but at the end of the day he's our Rory, from our Cork, our man.'

Extra.ie​

5 days ago

• Extra.ie​

Rory Gallagher's brother tells of night John Lennon came to see him

Rock legend Rory Gallagher's brother and long-time manager has revealed the siblings' varying reactions to an early word of praise from John Lennon. Dónal Gallagher was present yesterday as the main roadway at Cork Airport was renamed after his brother, as unveiled by Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The ceremony kicked off a summer of exhibitions, concerts and tours in tribute to 'Cork's finest cultural export' on the 30th anniversary of his death. Donal Gallagher. Pic:The blues legend has already been posthumously commemorated with statues, place names, stamps, coins, and festivals, but recognition, especially from the biggest names in music, was plentiful during his lifetime as well. 'One of the earliest ones' to leave a mark happened when Rory was still playing with Cork blues rock outfit Taste, his brother Dónal told John Lennon had 'turned up' to a Taste gig at the Lyceum Theatre in London and was asked by interviewers the following week what new music he liked. 'He just said he wasn't particularly enamoured with music at that time, but that he did see Taste, and the guy Rory Gallagher is going places,' Dónal said. 'At that time, to have Beatle recognition was a very big deal.' Dónal admitted it was 'hard for me to contain my excitement' at the nod from Lennon. John Lennon. Pic: by George Konig/Shutterstock 'I was chuffed to bits,' he recalled. But Rory, true to character, 'took it very modestly'. The original Gallagher brothers were more used to big-name praise by the time Bob Dylan came knocking some years later, but almost shunning the legendary songwriter was an accident. 'Dylan was in admiration of Rory's acoustic blues playing in particular,' Dónal explained. 'He turned up backstage [in LA], and initially I was turning him away. I didn't recognise him because so many people were trying to look like Bob Dylan. 'You're so preoccupied with the gig and what's going on and not letting the record company come backstage, so you've a million and one things on your mind. 'As he was turning to walk away, you see the side profile and see Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits [album cover] walk past you. The side profile did it. You're not expecting somebody like that to be there.' Other admirers came in the shape of ABBA, who shared a bill with Rory in the Swedish band's 'very early days'. ABBA. Pic: Charles Knight/REX/Shutterstock Dónal said: 'We had the same agent in Scandinavia, so there was a camaraderie. Right after Rory finished his set, they asked if they could have a picture taken with him. They were miming, so it was hysterical, because Rory's audience just didn't get it or know who ABBA were.' Courted throughout his career by legendary rock groups including Canned Heat, Deep Purple and Free, Gallagher came closest to joining the Rolling Stones, who invited him to the Netherlands to jam and record as they sought a replacement for Mick Taylor. 'Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] weren't talking, so you were being brought into this very fractious band in a state of flux,' Dónal said. Some of Gallagher's riffs ended up on the Stones' 1976 album Black and Blue – uncredited – although Dónal insisted it was 'not a contentious thing'. He said: 'Musicians borrow and lend and swap.' Rory Gallagher. Pic: Erica Echenberg/Redferns One of many 'ifs and buts' of the Irish guitar hero's career, the dalliance ended inconclusively after Richards failed to surface for a mooted 'chat'. 'This was the day before Rory was to fly back to get his connection to Tokyo [for a Japanese tour],' Dónal recalled. 'Rory went up to Keith's suite but Keith was comatose, and Rory went back every hour, and Keith was just completely comatose and out of it. 'So Rory very quietly packed his bag and got on the plane, and I met him with a fresh suitcase at Heathrow Airport.' Dónal learned basic guitar as a young teenager but admits now that his 'tutor was too good for me'. 'Rory would come home and say, 'Oh, you're doing really well,' and then he'd show you some other chord. He assumed that it was in the genes and you should be able to do it, so you had to do a Chuck Berry riff moving the small finger or something. He'd stretch it for you, and the next thing there'd be a brother's fight breaking out.' The world-renowned Montreux Jazz Festival favourite died in 1995, at the age of just 47, from complications following a liver transplant. Cork Rocks For Rory, a citywide tribute launched yesterday, includes a series of exhibitions featuring Rory memorabilia, handwritten lyrics, photos and more. A walking tour will introduce fans to the blues legend's 'stomping ground', while a series of concerts culminate with American Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa Live at the Marquee on the first three nights of July.