Siren

Roisin Burns is a hollow woman, her outer appearance a cover draped over something more troubling. After twenty- five years living in New York, she returns to her native Ireland to resolve issues from her past.

This brings her to remote Lamb Island, a community on the edge of a country rapidly reinventing itself. It also brings her back into the orbit of Brian Lonegran, a figure from her troubled past, now a rising politician, who will go to any length to ensure old secrets stay buried.

In this darkly atmospheric novel award-winning short story writer Annemarie Neary uses the familiar genre trope of the closed community to explore the long shadow cast by the Troubles.

Actually, there are two closed communities, almost contemporary Lamb Island and Belfast in the seventies. The latter recreated in all its grime and casual violence with devastating accuracy. Both have only a tangential link with authority and an atmosphere that crackles with paranoia and suspicion.

Her characters are satisfyingly complex and contradictory, particularly Roisin, and she has a genuine feel for the otherworldly landscapes of rural Ireland.

This assured debut puts Neary firmly on the literary map and further adding to the growing canon of first rate Irish crime writing.