Haunted Ground by
Erin Hart
hbk out May 03
Published by Hodder
at £18.99
A number of women writers domiciled in the United States write crime novels based in
the British Isles – with varying degrees of success (no, I didn't mention Martha Grimes).
This is a new writer with a difference, in that Erin Hart, who I think lives in Minnesota,
has written her first book placed in Southern Ireland. However, she is a very Irish American and if
her lead character is autobiographical, then she may have been born there. Certainly, her
husband is called Paddy O'Brien and they are frequent visitors to the Old Country and
know very many people there.
This is quite relevant to the book, as the whole tenor of the plot and characterisation is
perfectly authentic, down to the mode of speech and the attitudes of the people. The
word pictures of the West Midlands and Dublin could only have been drawn by someone
who knows and loves the country well.
A farmer digging peat in the Shannon valley in East Galway comes across a bog body –
or part of one, as it is the decapitated head of a red-haired young woman which must have
been there for centuries. Two boffins are sent for from Dublin, one being an
archaeologist, Cormac Maguire, and the other Nora Gavin, an Irish-born American lady
from Minnesota, who is an anatomy lecturer from Trinity College. She already has a
personal burden of grief, as her sister was killed in the States several years previously and
she suspects the guilt of her brother-in-law.
The head is examined and taken back to Dublin and there is good and authoritative detail
of the scientific steps taken to try to identify it. It was found on the land of a run-down
estate belonging to Hugh Osborne, whose Indian wife and small child vanished some
time before and he is suspected of being involved. He wishes to start some craft industry
on his land and hires Cormac to do an archaeological survey to clear the way for
building.
The other major player is a local CID man, who fouled up when he was in Cork and has
been dumped in East Galway to vegetate. He worries away at the Osborne case and the
two scientists become more deeply embroiled in the developments.
The standard of writing for a first novel is really excellent and the 'Irish-ness' of the
whole book is a delight. Perhaps the action was a bit slow for the first two-thirds, but
speeded up as the end approached – but the worth of the book is in the truly authentic feel
of Southern Ireland, which has been captured perfectly by a writer whose heart is
obviously in that unique country.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Haunted Ground by
Erin Hart
