Summer is ending in County Cork, Ireland, and with it the tourist season. Expat Maura Donovan is determined to keep Sullivan’s Pub in the black as the days grow shorter—but how? When she hears that the place was once a hot spot for Irish musicians who’d come play in the back room, she wonders if bringing back live music might be Sullivan’s salvation.
As word gets out, legendary musicians begin to appear at the pub, and the first impromptu jam session brings in scores of music lovers. But things hit a sour note when Maura finds a dead musician in the back room the next morning. With a slew of potential suspects, it’s going to take more than a pint and a good think to force a murderer to face the music.
I chose
to write about Ireland because I never knew my father’s parents, both of whom
were born there (although in different counties), and I thought seeing the
country might be a way to get to know them. My grandmother and grandfather came
to New York separately, in 1911, and connected when he made milk deliveries to
the back door of the house where she was a servant. They didn’t marry until
1918, and they had my father a year later. My grandmother was 38 at the time.
They
went on to have two more children. My father became a chemical engineer and
earned a master’s degree. His younger brother was a nuclear engineer at
Stanford, after getting a Ph.D. at Cal Tech. Their baby sister worked in
television in New York on the show Mr.
Peepers in the 1950s—not bad for a girl from Syracuse, although she went
home to marry a hometown Irish boy (it did turn out that he’d been a spy in
Paris in WWII, complete with trench coat—I’ve seen the picture). That’s quite
an impressive list of achievements for the offspring of two poorly educated
Irish natives who grew up raising cows out in the country. Is it any wonder I
wanted to know more? So I made my first trip there in 1998.
What did
I learn in Ireland? That there’s a particular kind of humor that seems familiar
to me. There’s also a sense of fatalism: even when things are going well (like
during the brief Celtic Tiger), there’s the sense that a bad turn is just
around the corner, but that’s nothing new and we’ll get through it somehow.
That the Irish people love words and talk and songs, and they love sharing all
of those.
The new
book in the series, An Early Wake, is
about music. Not the pipes and tin whistles kind, but contemporary music. I
based Sullivan’s pub in the series on Connolly’s, and for reasons that are still
a mystery to me, Connolly’s was once a center for bands and music in West Cork.
If you see the place, you end up scratching your head: it’s all of two rooms,
and it holds no more than 200 people legally, and only half of them in the back
room where the stage is. The stage was maybe a foot off the floor and about ten
feet square. Yet still they hosted bands you might have heard of, like the
Cranberries.
How did
the word get out? That’s even more mystifying. No Internet in those days. No
money for advertising, in the Cork papers or on the radio. The owner of the
place would book the bands and people would just show up. He’s gone now, but I
asked his 24-year-old son just how it happened, and he said, quite simply,
“magic.”
And he’s
right. There’s something magic about Ireland. I felt it the first time I saw
the place, and it keeps bringing me back. I want to write about it because I
want others to see what’s so special about the country and the people. It’s not
all rainbows and leprechauns (although I’ve seen plenty of the first, and maybe
a few of the second); there’s something deeper and more complex going on that
draws you in.
The
title of that first Irish book of mine (never published) was Home of the Heart. It still fits.
*The Irish History
One of the things that Sheila Connolly does extremely well is incorporate history into her stories. Her knowledge of Irish history is fascinating, and I always feel as though I've learned something after having read her books. Being that music is one of my fortes, the history lesson on Irish music hit home. It was so cool!
*Maura & Crew
These characters are spectacular. Maura is the PERFECT cozy heroine, and I love seeing her start to set her roots in Ireland. I also really enjoy her relationships with the supporting cast of characters. Ms. Connolly certainly knows how to make characters interact with one another in a realistic and believable way.
*The Setting
How on earth can you go wrong with Ireland?! And to top it all off, an Irish pub? How perfect is that? The descriptions of both make you feel like you've been whisked away on a vacation to a picturesque Ireland. Just beautiful!
*The Mystery
No one tells a mystery like Sheila Connolly.
Overall:
This was a GREAT addition to the County Cork series. It's just another layer of historical brilliance to these characters and their lives. I can't wait for the next book the series!
Rating: 5 stars
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All conclusions reached are my own.
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