The Good Turn

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A little girl goes missing, believed abducted. Garda Peter Fisher sets out to investigate and call in re-enforcements to help in the search for the abducted girl. Detective Cormac Reilly, when he hears of the alleged crime wants support and officers sent to help deal with the problem. He fears the child’s life is in danger and knows every hour is critical. But the hierarchy are too intent on a supposed drug bust to spare any men to help. Left to their own resources Peter and Cormac try and do the best they can with limited resources. When tragedy occurs they both end up as scapegoats. It seems too clear that Cormac’s enemies are out to get rid of him. And given his father’s intervention in Peter’s situation, Peter is faced with a choice he never anticipated having to make. The trouble is, as far as Cormac is concerned that corruption is within the police force itself, which makes exposing it a dangerous prospect. With both Peter’s and Cormac’s career hanging by a thread, who can they trust? I really enjoyed that this book wasn't completely tied up with a neat ribbon at the end, that the bow is slightly wonky, ands that just how it is sometimes. For 9+ readers, this gripping, thoughtful update to the Blytonesque "secret society" genre engages squarely with racism and social injustice.' Guardian

There’s a lot of detailed descriptions in the book which seem totally unnecessary in the end. It added to the atmosphere I guess (all the snow, the trips to the supermarket, Cormac and his girlfriend Emma and more) but just made it slow and overly long. I'd love to see this book continued as a series, and I'm sure a lot of younger readers, as well as older ones, can learn a lot from reading it. The main theme of THE GOOD TURN is police corruption — dealt with at several levels — by Fisher in the small village setting and Reilly on the national scale. While reading it, I was reminded of Ian Rankin’s writings, high praise coming from me.I know that a lot of people will disagree with my review entirely. And I get it. You have to do some real magical thinking to read crime fiction, you have to be able to live in a fictional world where good cops can take down bad ones. For a lot of people that's the attraction. I just couldn't do it this time. Puffin is an imprint of Penguin Random House, the world’s number-one publisher representing a vibrant community of publishing houses marked by unparalleled success. Through our world of stories, Puffin aims to open up the world to every child. Our mission is to inspire children to feel they can be and do anything, and to create readers for life.

I enjoyed The Ruin and The Scholar but I think McTiernan stepped it up another notch with this, the third in the Cormac Reilly series. So begins a series of adventures, small ones at first but then after seeing lights on in the empty factory building Josie wants to explore a bit more and everything becomes a lot more serious. Des's style is to live and let live and accumulate favours that he can call in when he needs to. When Peter gets into trouble and has to work with his father, he gets the lecture.

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For some, like Anna and her young daughter Tilly, Roundstone is a refuge from trauma. But even this village on the edge of the sea isn't far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men. I think this might be my favourite so far. Clever, well-written, and with people I look forward to meeting again in the future. Cormac is still struggling after his move to the Garda Station in Galway where he is resented by those outside his team. The Superintendent doesn't make his life easy, refusing him the extra man power he needs when a young girl is snatched of the street. Cormac also suspects that some of the detectives may be involved in corrupt activities. When their shortage of man power leads to Peter Fisher, an inexperienced Detective acting on his own a terrible mistake occurs that could end his career. Cormac is help responsible by the Super and put on suspension, while Peter is shunted off to work in his father's Garda station in Roundstone, the little village where he grew up. Books about police are complicated. For me they always have been. Even when they're not set in the US. But in this book, even more than the previous two, gives us Reilly as the One Good Cop. She spends an awful lot of time showing us how the One Good Cop cannot take down systemic corruption, but then of course at the very last minute somehow it all works out for our Cormac. It doesn't really work unless you are a reader who can ignore the previous 95% of the book where it was made fully clear to us that this level of corruption is impossible to destroy. And of course to make it all work McTiernan has to give us some ridiculous coincidences and the kind of irrefutable evidence that never exists in the real world. It starts as critique and then turns into outright fantasy and they don't go together. As they set out to attempt to earn their Camping Badge, the three friends soon find themselves drawn to an abandoned factory. There, they are confronted with a mystery that needs to be solved. They find two tatty armchairs and a square, ancient TV. An old photograph of a young, happy couple. Who lives in such a place? And why? Josephine and her friends are determined to find out.

There are several separate threads-a mother whose young daughter hasn't spoken for three months; the violent abduction of another young girl; the suspension of Cormac Reilly and the banishment of officers who support him. The twisted part of a lie is that it sometimes drips from the very mouth of those we hold in high regard. The sting of it has the grip of a scorpion's venom. DS Cormac Reilly will be faced with sifting through a trail of its aftermath knowing full well that someone in the ranks is determined to end his long career with the slam of untruths. And how do you untangle yourself from the web of deceit? Overall, this book ties up threads from earlier books, but the end is rushed, with mostly summaries which are unsatisfactory.DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Harper Collins Australia for providing a digital ARC of The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

The Ruin was an outstanding debut but The Scholar proves beyond a doubt that Dervla McTiernan is a remarkable talent ... crime fiction of the highest standard' - Jane Casey A sharp, funny middle grade adventure with themes of real-life activism and how to help others for fans of The Goonies and The London Eye Mystery. Dervla McTiernan does it again, writing a book vastly different from most police procedurals. Three moving parts - police corruption, a kidnapping investigation gone horribly wrong and a young girl’s silence. McTiernan pulls them together as easily as braiding hair. She just continues to impress me.

And alongside this is Anna and her daughter Tilly, currently mute from some unnamed trauma. They begin as a separate thread and join the other threads as the story moves on. He would think of his father as he would any other difficult senior officer. Someone to be avoided, or managed.” Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Sounds like a country copper, whereas Cormac Reilly has come from Dublin and wants to cross every T and dot every i. But Peter has seen enough of Reilly’s methods to question his father’s rather dismissive air and his demands that Peter stop questioning people about something which Des considers an open-and-shut case.