Book of the month
The Night I Killed Him by Gill Perdue. Published by Penguin, €15.99.
Here is a white-knuckle ride of a story, and made even more plausible thanks to its setting in and around Dún Laoghaire in Co Dublin. For fans of the author, Gill Perdue, it also reunites the readers with Niamh Darmody and Laura Shaw, Garda specialist victim interviewers. They appeared in Perdue’s first novel for adults, If I Tell, and again in When They See Me.
Now in her fifties, and a dance teacher in addition to being an author, Perdue was best known two decades ago for her four children’s books. A primary school teacher for 15 years, she uses that experience to great effect when creating the character of four-year-old Ferdia in her latest work, The Night I Killed Him. The boy is the son of social media influencer Gemma Fitzgerald, and it is she who is the central character in the book.
Don’t let the phrase social media influencer put you off. Gemma is thankfully not one of the vacuous ‘personalities’ we readily associate with the phenomenon, but rather one with a strong empathy to her followers. She seems to have it all, the perfect home and marriage, a handsome husband who enjoys his yachting, and the adorable young Ferdia. But her apparently perfect life is set to change.
Eighteen years earlier, on the night of his 21st birthday party, Gemma’s brother Max, a young man who again has everything, goes missing, and is understood to have taken his own life. However, Gemma knows the true story, and for all the time since that fateful night has lived with a dark secret. She has managed to get away with not having to reveal the real reason for his death, but her picture-perfect life is set to be shattered.
Max’s body is washed up on a beach, and suddenly Gemma’s glamorous and idyllic lifestyle is left hanging by a thread. With a real skill for characterisation, Perdue takes us at a fast pace through the investigation by Shaw and Dermody, All the while, the fear is building in Gemma that her past is finally about to catch up with her, and that she could lose her husband and precious little boy.
Perdue has spoken publicly about the decades between major stints of writing, feeling somewhat invisible, an experience she believes many women of a certain age undergo. However, she is back in the limelight with this well-written, fast-paced read.
Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome. Published by Penguin Vintage Books, €13
Swallows and Amazons is the first in Arthur Ransome’s classic series of books about the Walker children. When we first meet them, John (12), Susan (10), Titty (8) and Roger (7) are spending the summer with their mother in the Lake District.
On the first day, they see an island on the lake, and all four have the same thought. “It was their island. With an island like that in sight, who could be content to live on the mainland and sleep in a bed at night?” That sets the tone for what follows in this enchanting book; children left to their own devices to manage their days, and make their own fun.
Their father’s catboat, Swallow, is stolen, but all comes right in the end, thus setting the stage for ten delightful sequels, all of which celebrate the resourcefulness of young people allowed to get their hands dirty.
Are You Dancing? by Rebecca S Miller. Published by Indiana University Press, €30
If you went dancing anytime between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, you will be familiar with names such as Butch Moore and the Capitol Showband, Big Tom and the Miami Showband. These are but a handful of names that filled ballrooms throughout the length and breadth of the island.
These bands were all the rage for Ireland’s dancing audiences, mainly performing rock ‘n’ roll and pop hits from Britain and America. They offered Irish youth and rural communities a chance to hear something of the music culture from outside the country, and all the while dismaying parish priests who usually stood in opposition to this new wave.
A lifetime’s work of research and hundreds of interviews have come together to produce this scholarly work, but written in an accessible format.
Death at the White Hart, by Chris Chibnall. Published by Penguin, €15.99
Here is a debut novel from a multi-award-winning screenwriter, executive producer and playwright, much of whose work in television has enraptured audiences for years. Are you a Broadchurch fan? If so, then this book is right up your street, as that television series is Chris Chibnall’s creation.
If The Night I Killed Him is a riveting read, then Death at the White Hart moves at a more sedate pace, but no less tense. We have all visited a pub at some time similar to the White Hart, set in a picturesque village. When Detective Nicola Bridge moves to Fleetcombe in Dorset, she does not expect to become embroiled in solving a grisly murder.
The victim is landlord Jim Tiernan, found tied to a chair in the middle of the road, with a stag’s antlers on his head. A killer is hiding in plain sight.
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