Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Southern Ireland in 1921, a country engaged in a brutal war of independence marked by cruelty on both sides. An IRA ambush staged at Kilcolgan House, the crumbling seat of an aristocratic family with links to the ‘struggle’ goes badly wrong. The intended victim escapes and Maud, the daughter of Lord Kilcolgan dies instead. Fearing the damage losing a prominent supporter will do to their cause the IRA send intelligence officer Captain Tom Harkin to investigate.
On one level this is a country house mystery that could, if they had been a little more concerned with the politics of their time, have come from the pen of a writer of the ‘golden age’. There is a riddle to solve and a houseful of suspects to interrogate, most of whom could have done the deed.
Look deeper though and you soon encounter a far more ambitious book, one that brims with an otherworldly atmosphere that is uniquely Irish. This is only added to by the presence of Harkin, a haunted man in a haunted land dogged by memories of his failed engagement to Maud and the horrors he witnessed in the trenches.
The setting in a rural community where tradition and grudges run deep is brilliantly evoked without resorting to cliches. As is the political background with the extent to which both sides were willing to go to achieve their aims being shown with unflinching honesty.
W.C Ryan has produced a novel that seamlessly unites a historically accurate portrait of a county in transition from one form of inflexible authority to another and a genuinely gripping mystery.
