Irish queens of crime fiction rightly take the laurels

Published date18 March 2023
This grotesque opening to Strange Sally Diamon d (Sandycove, £14.99) encapsulates Liz Nugent's method in more than one respect. She understands brilliantly the way the macabre and the comic combine; she has a flair for the bravura curtain raiser; and she is drawn repeatedly to socially and psychologically nonconforming characters

When Sally's adoptive mother dies, she refuses to go up to Dublin for the funeral; when her psychiatrist Dad returns and asks her if she misses Mum, she reassures him that she doesn't and that he's not to worry about her. Sally isn't neurodivergent, she is just "emotionally disconnected", "a bit odd". And just as burning a body in a barn is a rather more protracted process than initially envisaged, Sally's emergence into the world at the age of 42 (until now, she has pretended to be deaf in public to evade scrutiny and interaction) proves to be an arduous and awkward progress, and one that Nugent charts with meticulous, nuanced fidelity.

In the world, Sally operates without a filter, by turns gauche and perspicacious, and often both at once: a memorial service at the local church is arranged; when the vicar asks if she'd think of attending regularly, she says: "No, it's very boring." Meanwhile, at home, she works her way through the letters her father has left for her, alerting her to the horrific circumstances of her early years. Sally's mother was kidnapped aged 11 and held in a house in Killiney, where she was raped repeatedly over 15 years, giving birth to Sally and to a boy, Peter. Peter's narrative begins in 1974, and the book tacks back and forth between Sally in the present day and Peter over nearly 40 years, as the sins of their father work their tragic way through the generations, ranging across continents and reflecting social and cultural change.

This is harrowing territory, yet the narrative strands are suffused with energy and texture. Above all, at the centre of this troubling, ingeniously conceived, utterly absorbing novel, Sally is a terrific, protean creation, imbued with immense life force and a kind of naive charm. It is never less than enthralling to spend time in her company, and the novel's soaring coda is a tribute to her spirit. No one is writing remotely like Liz Nugent now. She is, as Duke Ellington said of Ella Fitzgerald, beyond category.

It's business as usual in the opening pages of The Close (HarperCollins, €19.55), Jane Casey's rich, atmospheric, engaging new Maeve Kerrigan novel. Maeve and her...

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