Book Review: Death in Irish Accents by Catie Murphy

It’s been well over a year since American expat Megan Malone has been involved with investigating a murder, a year in which she’s settled down into her Dublin home with her Polish girlfriend Jelena and her two no-longer-puppies Dip and Thong. Megan is actually relaxing with Jelena at Accents, a cafe they both enjoy, when an innocent request for them to move so that Anie the barista can access supplies from a closet behind them leads to this streak being broken in most gruesome fashion, as a corpse falls out of the closet and on to the coffee table before them.

Megan immediately rings up her friend Detective Paul Bourke, who isn’t at all pleased Megan’s managed to be on-scene at the discovery of yet another body. Jelena is even more unhappy. She hates that Megan somehow attracts the corpses of the murdered, and wants to bar her from getting involved altogether. Megan is quick to agree, even though a large part of her already feels involved and hates leaving any mystery unsolved. While she knows the dead woman by sight—Blathnaid was a member of the writing group who used Accents as their communal office—she didn’t actually know her well enough to greet by name. Reluctantly, Megan accepts the fact that her participation in this murder case ought to begin and end with the shocking find.

That quickly changes, however, when Megan’s very next assignment as a limo driver is for a woman who is all too eager to hear more about Megan’s macabre reputation:

As soon as Megan pulled up, she rushed to the car, yanked open the back door, and jumped in before Megan could even kill the engine, much less get out and hold the door like the limo service offered. “Megan Malone? The murder driver?”

 

The woman had a distinct Midwest accent and an air of excited expectation that Megan suddenly didn’t want to meet. For the space of a heartbeat, she considered just becoming an actual murder driver and killing the woman instead of answering her questions.

Fortunately for Claire Woodward, Megan’s good sense quickly takes over. After downplaying her own role in solving murder mysteries, Megan discovers that the main reason Claire is so intrigued by her reputation is because the older woman is an author with an insatiable interest in good stories. Claire isn’t just any author either. While she confides in Megan that most people in her field rarely make a ton of money, her own books sell like hotcakes, catapulting her to high-earning, superstar status. Claire is well aware it’s just as much luck as hard work and creativity that have gotten her to that point in her career though, and claims to want to give back.

Recently, she’s been persuaded by an old acquaintance to mentor a talented young writer in her own genre. Megan is aghast to realize the talented writer in question is poor dead Blathnaid, and isn’t sure how to break the news of the young woman’s death. When Claire asks to be dropped off at Accents to meet up with the writing group she’s been working with during her stay in Ireland, Megan can’t help but wonder if perhaps she could help Paul just a teeny bit by passing on any information she might glean from squiring the famous author around. It wouldn’t really be investigating if she was just doing her job, right? But as the animosity within the writers’ group becomes clearer, Megan must untangle a web of deceit and murder before she herself can become the next target of a desperate killer.

This series is always so much fun, from the solid mysteries and characterizations to the humor and genuine love for Ireland, its people and culture. I love how firmly rooted it is in Dublin as a modern city, with a diverse populace and rich history. I didn’t so much love the use of the disapproving partner trope, but that is largely rooted in the fact that I think Megan is awesome and should always get her way. I love how funny and self-aware she is, even if the two don’t necessarily happen at the exact same time:

Megan, somewhat insensitively, said, “Well, [the dead woman] didn’t put herself into that closet, Anie,” and the young woman paled so sharply she had to sit down. A stab of guilt shot through Megan. She generally forgot that she was technically old enough to be most of the staff’s mother. Being fortysomething was supposed to feel grown-up, but Megan had come to the conclusion that most people never actually felt grown-up. They just got older, and spent a lot of their time being vaguely surprised that they no longer shared the same life experiences as a twenty-five-year-old.

The Dublin Driver mystery novels form a really great contemporary cozy series, with excellent, matter-of-fact queer representation and a refreshing lack of what Megan herself pokes fun at as “Oirishness”—a state of exaggerating Irish characteristics in order to appeal to tourists. Reading these books really feels like taking a mini-tour of Dublin as it is today, in the company of a delightful guide who just so happens to have a knack for solving murder mysteries. I can’t wait to read more!