Book of the Week September 3, 2026
The light and darkness that are modern and past Ireland are embodied in Detective Inspector Lewan Kane, who in this kick-in-the-gut debut investigates the death of a man who’s been decapitated and left in an Irish field. As in the best crime fiction, that’s just the surface layer of a tale that takes readers on a journey through geography, the past, and terrible misdeeds and puzzles. Lewan is at first (barely) politely rejecting of help from a young woman whose dreams make her beg him to investigate a seemingly unrelated missing-person case. As the images and names she comes up with start to be relevant to the case, he can no longer ignore her. The symbolism of names plays a major role here, perhaps unsurprisingly given the author’s own meaning-laden name, and add to the idea that every word of this story is to be closely turned in the readers’ hand. Move over, Tana French.—Henrietta Thornton
