Title: Murder at an Irish Castle
Author: Ellie Brannigan
Series: An Irish Castle Mystery #1
Poorly written
Much thanks to Ellie Brannigan, Dreamscape Media, and Netgalley for allowing me to listen to a free eaudiobook in exchange for an honest review.
If you’re looking for a juicy mystery, you won’t find it here. This is primarily a women’s fiction story about a woman who not only loses everything but who also has to move to Ireland or she’ll destroy hundreds of lives. I’m honestly impressed she was able to function; that kind of stress would have me in the psych ward gorked on tranqs.
There is a murder mystery, but you’re not going to be on the edge of your seat chewing your nails down to the quick as the main character goes about sleuthing and flirting with danger. The little bit of sleuthing she does really doesn’t even count because she needed to go over those accounts regardless. She spends far more time hanging with/arguing with her housemates—estatemates?—and figuring out how to get her wedding dress business up and running again than she does looking for clues or interviewing witnesses. Doesn’t help that the primary witness is a dog.
I loved that dog, though. 😉
Even if viewed as women’s fiction, the story meanders. MC goes on a “date,” explores the culture, tours the estate, spends way too much time shopping for fabrics—skipped that—setting up a workspace—skipped that—and trying to find room for all her designer clothes—definitely skipped that. It almost felt like the author had an idea for a story—cliched as that idea may be—but didn’t know how to execute it. Or didn’t know how to reach the word quota and just started throwing in filler scenes. No tension, except when Keira and David were around being walking conflicts.
God, they were unlikeable, Keira especially. Whiny, entitled, obstinate, self-centered, judgmental, defensive, snarky, arrogant. Born out of wedlock and thinks the world owes her something because she was dealt a bad hand. I couldn’t stand her. The MC was likeable and sympathetic, but I didn’t relate to her much because she has a WAY different lifestyle and interests than me.
It didn’t help that the narrator, Traci Odom, portrayed the Irish women with rather high-pitched tones. Keira’s was the highest, and at times I actually physically cringed when she spoke. I really hated Keira scenes, and she was the foremost secondary character, so she was around a lot. And just to be clear, I blame the narrator’s performance, not an Irish accent in general. Her Irish men’s tones were fine and so was the MC’s American accent. But for some reason the voices she gave the Irish women grated. Unfortunate.
I’m inclined to say that if this is any kind of mystery, it’s more of a cozy, but I hesitate because I don’t read many cozies. For all I know it’s common in cozies for cops to be so inept that they don’t investigate the victim’s final days or question if the victim kept a journal until over a week after the homicide. Or if it’s common in cozies for the MC to not have a relationship, friendly or romantic, with a cop or PI. Makes sleuthing a lot easier if they do.
Overall, this was not my kind of book. Couldn’t relate to the MC, wasn’t overly fond of any of the secondaries—except Blarney, such a sweetie pie—and was underwhelmed by the confused genre/plot.
Additional nitpick: Thinking on it, I find I’m rather confused on the uncle’s death. To my understanding, he was originally thought to have been killed in a tractor accident, but the ME’s report reveals he actually overdosed on heart medication—while he was mowing, and the tractor crashed because, ya know, dead driver.
What baffles me is something that’s said toward the end: the villain cut the hydraulic lines of the tractor. The book had lost my full attention by then, so it’s entirely possible I misunderstood—and if that’s the case, my profuse apologies for this rant—but cutting the hydraulic lines makes absolutely zero sense.
1. Per my dad, who has lived and worked on farms his entire life and uses machinery, including tractors with mowing attachments, regularly: “Modern hydraulic lines are usually covered by braided stainless steel mesh and rubber on top of that. Cutting a hydraulic line would be a fairly aggressive process and quite obvious. It’d be easier to just loosen a fitting so only a slow leak would occur. Fittings work loose all the time, far less suspicious. I had trouble with my Bobcat last summer because one hydraulic hose fitting was loose by just a quarter turn. Tightened it up, has worked fine since.”
2. If the villain had cut the hydraulic hoses despite how difficult it probably would have been to do so—well, first, you only would have needed to cut one hose—also, I don’t remember if the villain was to have done this before or after the uncle’s death; I’m going to assume beforehand, because doing it after would make even less sense. Anyway, if the villain had cut the lines, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing would have happened, except the attachment wouldn’t work—assuming they cut the lines to the attachment and not the tractor’s steering. Well, doesn’t matter, the point is the same—the hydraulic fluid would have leaked out where it was parked, and without fluid, the steering wouldn’t work at all. Period. Or the bucket wouldn’t lift, the mower wouldn’t engage, etc. Just like a brake line on your car—even if the brakes themselves are perfectly sound, without brake fluid in the lines, they aren’t going to work.
Whiiiich means that if the hydraulic hoses had been cut preemptively, the Uncle wouldn’t have been mowing that day at all, unless they could have acquired and replaced the hoses within the day, which I doubt. But assuming they couldn’t fix it that quickly, Uncle wouldn’t have been out mowing that evening, which means there wouldn’t have been a tractor accident. He would have perhaps been relaxing at home when he died. So if the author wanted the uncle’s death occurring in a tractor accident, wanted him ostensibly killed by said accident, cutting the hydraulics would make that impossible. Thus my confusion.
All I can figure is that mentioning the tractor had been tampered with made David, the unofficial mechanic, appear more guilty. So, unless I misunderstood something, that was an epic fail of a red herring.
