Peachy Reads

This intriguing police procedural, set in and around Dublin, chronicles two cases that take place in the same locale, but years apart. Detective Ryan is assigned to the modern day case, even though he (secretly) was one of the victims in the previous case that happened to him as a preteen. With all of the conflicts of interest this entails, the story is made even more complex by Ryan’s psychological demons, his trauma-induced amnesia about the past, and the fact that he seems to be an unreliable narrator. This is a complex story, and I felt it took some time to get moving, but the complexity is what makes it compelling, and while the ending is not wholly satisfactory with no resolution regarding the first case, it was well worth the read.

This novel starts out a little like Murder on the Orient Express when a severe snowstorm and then avalanche cuts off an Alpine hotel (formerly a tuberculosis sanatorium) after the disappearances of several staff members. Elin, a vacationing police detective, is deputized by the Swiss police to investigate the murders that transpire at the snowbound hotel under unusual circumstances. The premise and the setting are great for this novel, it even has hints of The Shining , but the unlikable and unbelievable characters and the overly complex plotting sort of ruined it for me.