| Nessa
and her husband bought a country house and turned it into
a vacation home for those wanting to visit Ireland and it’s
been very successful – until now. This season a lodger
named Maureen was assaulted and left for dead. Nessa’s
husband is in Africa visiting a sick loved one so she, alone,
has to face Maureen’s angry husband and the bad publicity
it’s caused. Maureen’s husband, Dominic, gets
violent and blames Nessa for the assault. Then it goes from
bad to worse when a second lodger who is wealthy and well-known
is found dead. Now a pushy journalist joins Dominic in making
life difficult for Nessa. Nessa’s eighteen-year- old
daughter, Sal, is too self-absorbed to care, but Nessa’s
friend Darnia is willing to help Nessa get away from it all.
Policeman Redmond Joyce is assigned to Bantry station and
his dream is to become a detective. Detective Inspector Trevor
O’Kelleher is the senior officer at Bantry and it’s
up to him to keep contact with a number of smaller stations
in west Cork. Redmond joins DI O’Kelleher on the current
case involving Nessa and her lodger. Joyce knows Nessa was
an investigative journalist who left her job for the good
life.
When
news gets out about the murder Nessa’s current lodgers’
feel a vacation on Ireland’s Atlantic coastline isn’t
so picturesque after all. Joyce wants to solve both cases
and a cut-throat journalist will do anything to get the story.
Nessa just wants it all to go away…
The mystery
itself is well written; it’s a mix of Traditional and
Police Procedural. Sweeney is very adept at describing the
beauty of Ireland’s Atlantic Coastline, and her main
characters are memorable. In the first glimpse of these main
characters we see Nessa growing strong and getting curious,
again, whereas Joyce seems severe and just a bit odd.
Deadly
Intent is Anna Sweeney’s debut mystery. It was
actually translated from Gaelic. I’ve read in various
places that Deadly Intent is the first book in a
series starring Policeman Redmond Joyce and Nessa McDermott.
Whether it is or not is yet to be seen since the book was
first published in 2010 as Buille Marfach and there
is yet to be a second in the series. I, for one, hope we meet
Nessa and Redmond again; I really enjoyed Deadly Intent.
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