Book Review: THE KILLER IN ME

Title: The Killer In Me

Author: Olivia Kiernan
Publisher: riverrun
Pages: 352

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Killer in Me by Olivia Kiernan is a solid thriller about a series of murders that rock a small town in Ireland at a critical time when a convict has been released after serving time for the brutal murders of his own parents and the attempted murder of his younger sister.

Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan is roped by her sister-in-law Tanya West, a defense lawyer, into a meeting with Sean Hennessy, who has been released after serving a sentence of 17 years in prison. A mere 15-year-old then, Sean was arrested for the murder of his parents, John and Brid, and the attempted murder of his younger sister, Cara. Following the release of a documentary, Tanya wants to create a case for Sean’s innocence on behalf of her charity which reopens cases of miscarriage of justice.

Frankie agrees to review the footage and see if Sean has a case, even if she doesn’t believe him and her sympathies lie firmly with the victims of his crimes, his parents and his sister, who is now living in isolation under an assumed name as part of the witness protection program.

When the bodies of a husband and wife, Alan and Geraldine Shine, are found in the local church, with the words, Murderer and Victim, written on their bodies. Frankie can’t help but wonder if Sean has anything to do with these murders. The case stirs up media frenzy and Frankie faces administrative pressures to find the killer, while staying a step ahead of the Hennessy investigation to learn if the state was wrong in convicting Sean. Things get complicated further when a local journalist, Connor Sheridan, is found dead with the word, Weapon, written next to him.

Frankie feels compelled to drive into the Hennessy case to see if there are any loose ends there that might explain the multiple murders. Her realization that both Brid and Geraldine were victims of domestic violence helps her to see a link between the two cases. She also remembers that her own life has intersected with that of the Hennessys when Brid walked up to Frankie’s parents’ home to seek help from Frankie’s mother, a social worker, on how she and her children could escape the abusive environment of her home.

As she delves deeper into the investigation, it becomes clear that her boss, Clancy, is hiding something and that her own family is being targeted and that there will be consequences to continuing the investigation. Will she be able to tie up the loose ends before her own family is caught in the crossfire?

Set in Ireland, this is the second book in the Frankie Sheehan series and is written in her first person present tense point of view. I enjoyed reading this one. I found the investigation very real and interesting.

There are similarities that strike us about the Hennessys and the Sheehans. Both families face their own troubles, both fathers are dysfunctional, albeit in different ways. The only difference is that one family recovered and gained strength, while the other didn’t.

We come to understand the scourge of domestic violence and how it destroys lives and families. We also learn of the dangers that police personnel encounter everyday as they come face to face with the worst of human evil and depravity. Sometimes when you look into the mouth of that kind of evil, it’s hard to look away. You think, give it another few moments, your eyes will adjust, you’ll see the bottom of that darkness, understand it. It’s alluring. Addictive. And whilst you’re standing there rooted to the spot, you’re not noticing that the…shadow is closing over you and you’re disappearing.

The book also discusses the theme of memories, repressed and tortured, and about the toll that domestic violence takes on victims, especially children, as can be seen in the two quotes below.

The mind is a fragile being, a vulnerable mesh of soft cells. Malleable. The hard shell of the skull unable to shield it from memory or nightmare, loops both together in the brain’s primitive pool for survival making memory unreliable.

I learned about the terror that reigned over our lives, infused by the mundaneness of domesticity, having breakfast together while nursing bruises. Ironing school uniforms, polishing shoes among the mayhem. All the small events that told us that we were normal. But we weren’t.

There’s a mild degree of offensive language in the form of F-bombs, which show up when the team is frustrated about the slow investigation and the dead ends they face.

At 352 pages, the book is a long read, but it doesn’t feel slow or unnecessary at any point. The author builds up the atmosphere so well that I almost felt as if I were walking the streets of the seaside town of Clontarf in spite of never having been to Ireland.

The title refers to the bitter truth about how circumstances might so easily drive a good person to make a bad decision. Could there be a killer in us that can rise, given sufficient provocation?

I hope we never find out.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: THE DEAD HOUSE: A NOVEL

Title: The Dead House: A Novel

Author: Billy O'Callaghan
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Pages: 224

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Dead House by Billy O’Callaghan is high on atmosphere and silent menace and manages to keep the tension high right up to the end.

The book is written from the first person past tense point of view of Michael Simmons, an art agent, married to Alison and the father of Hannah. Michael gets pulled into the drama of Maggie Turner, an artist-cum-friend, for whom he cares deeply.

Getting away from an abusive relationship, Maggie buys an old dilapidated house in a scenic locale and spends a fortune, borrowing heavily from Michael, in renovating it. Once done, she invites Michael, an art gallery owner-friend Alison, with whom she wants to set Michael up, and Liz, a poet, for the housewarming. That weekend, Liz brings out an Ouija board, and for the fun of it, summons spirits to get in contact with them. A spirit calling itself The Master asks permission to enter in Irish. Only their Irish language skills being weak, they mistake the question for permission to join.

Slowly the joy leaves Maggie as she lets the house go to seed, living with the stench of death and the real presence of the Master in the house.

Michael and Alison decide to drive down and make one big effort to save her. Will they succeed? Will the evil release its hold on Maggie? Or will it consume all their lives?

This, to me, was horror of the worst kind, the horror of watching a loved one lost forever to something inexplicable rather than just things going bump in the night. This book will really terrify you, once you imagine something as terrible as this happening to someone you care for.

The Dead House is not a typical ghost story. The book ends on an unsettling note. There is a sense of something terrible waiting to happen. The horror of it is like a sword dangling on our heads. We know it is going to fall. The question is when.

When the horror appears to want to take little Hannah into its fold, Michael and Alison realise that their worst nightmare has invaded the present. For us as readers too, this is a disquieting realization. The fact that the author makes no promise of an upcoming sequel in which the horror might be put to rest makes the situation even worse.

Part I shows us Michael in the present, telling us of his friendship with Maggie. Part II takes us to her obsession with the house and the summoning of the spirit. Part III is back in the present, 9 years later.

The physical descriptions of that part of Ireland are hauntingly beautiful, and reading these passages gave me gooseflesh. It’s almost as if the place doesn’t exist on the same plane as the rest of us do. In a city with its crowds and traffic noise, reality is a sheet of thick glass… Out here, just like the ocean, it pulls to tide and current. And, just like the ocean, its surface can be easily broken.

The descriptions give us a glimpse of the generations that have existed, centuries ago, never knowing of other lives. Of places where time stood still, where nothing had changed, where rocks, ocean, sky, wind and rain were the only things that weren’t fleeting.

Michael is a pragmatic man, who comes from a belief system that doesn’t subscribe to anything not of this world. The stains of skepticism are just as hard to scrub away as those of faith. But living through the horror that engulfs Maggie, he changes his mind. We glimpse or experience something that defies explanation and we either accept the stretch in our reality or we choose to turn our heads away.

In a book beset with bad men such as Maggie’s abusive ex-boyfriend Pete and Alison’s ex-husband Laurence who modelled the term ‘selfish bastard’ at professional catwalk level, Michael comes across as an inherently good man.

But even he admits that he could have done more to save Maggie, to prevent the nightmare that happened to her, or even to make some attempt, futile though it may have been, to rescue her. We all think that we’ll walk through walls for the people who matter most to us, that we’ll willingly push ourselves against the muzzle of a gun for them. But we can’t know. Not until the moment arrives.

His experiences give him a new perspective on places that are supposed to be haunted, an explanation that he clings to because the alternative would drive him crazy. People talk all the time about haunted places… But I’m not sure it has much to do with ghosts. I think it just means it’s held tightly by the past in ways that other places aren’t.

We receive no clear answer about what happened to Maggie or to what the Master did to her. We can only imagine how horrible the consequence may have been, given that the reveries summoned to Maggie’s mind during the Ouija session are so deeply disturbing. We are reminded of issues such as mortality and the beyond and what reality is, and how much of the other world presses down on us.

The Prologue seeks to introduce the subject to us in a philosophical vein. By the end of the book, neither Michael nor we have much use for the philosophy. So strong is the sense of terror conjured up.

(I read this book through NetGalley.)