Books: A memoir from a woman convicted of a murder she didn’t commit
This week there are stories set in Drogheda and Arizona, California and London. There’s a memoir from a woman convicted of a murder she didn’t commit and there’s a delightful activity book for the little people.
As the Tide Turns at Tredagh, Caroline Lynch, Clay Hill Publishing, €14.99
The port of Drogheda used to be called Tredagh, as I learned from this novel, and it’s there we encounter Ellen Cooney, about to deliver her second child. It’s the mid-1860s and Ellen’s husband, a merchant seaman, is at sea. Ellen doesn’t yet know he’s been drowned off the South American coast. When she learns of his fate, she is heartbroken and her only support is local midwife and healer, Peggy Murphy, who does her best to steer Ellen through the grief. Ellen has to work if she’s to feed her family and, because she can read and write, gets an accounts clerk job with the local mill factory owner, Nicholas Clinton, who’s a creep.
Laurence Clinton, Nicholas’s brother, returns from New York with money for arms and plans for a new Fenian uprising. The uprising fails and Larry is imprisoned, firstly in the UK and is then sent on to Australia. But Larry and Ellen have already struck up a relationship – much to the chagrin of Nicholas – and at the time of Larry’s leaving, Ellen is carrying his child. A troubled life story, evocative and full of the bustle and haste of this busy port town.
A Job in Whitepost, Ailbhe Donohue, Vanguard Press, €14.50
The streaming TV channels are now full of old-fashioned Western sagas, usually serialised. We called them ‘cowboy films’ when I was a nipper and they since fell out of fashion, but they’re back with a vengeance now. So, it was only a matter of time before old-fashioned Western novels (cowboy books!) such as this one began to pop up. The governor of New Mexico has charged US Marshall, Harrison James, with the investigation of a stagecoach robbery just outside the town of Whitepost in the Arizona Territory. Harrison’s brother Morgan is appointed deputy marshall, but he’s not quite as thorough – or indeed as hardworking – as Harrison. Whitepost is a lawless town where the saloons are too full, the workplaces too empty, and Harrison just wants to get the job done and move on. He meets the mysterious Leonora Taylor, a travelling saloon singer, who’s now 27 and has been making her own way in the world since she ran away from an appalling home at the age of 16. And Leonora finds she’s drawn to the lawman. But there’s trouble afoot, leading Harrison to wrestle with the forces of good and evil, honour and deception. Can he win?
The President’s Sticker Activity Book, Peter Donnelly, Gill, €10.99
Children’s author Peter Donnelly continues his ‘President’ series with a gorgeous activity book that will keep young kids amused for ages, full of sticker sheets and a pull-out poster, spot-the-difference puzzles and lots of colouring in. It’s a lovely, interactive supplement to the collection.
Killer Potential, Hannah Deitch, W&N, €19.99
A cat-and-mouse thriller, a queer love story, a twisty plot where the reader can’t see what’s coming and also a lot of fun, this is the story of Evie Gordon, recently graduated from college and up to her hollyhocks in student debt. She privately tutors the kids of wealthy parents in an attempt to pay her bills. As she approaches one student’s house for her class, she finds not the student, but the parents. Dead as dodos, their bodies strewn across their back garden. She can hear noise from inside the house and finds a woman locked in a closet, frees her, and the pair quickly realise that they’ve gone from witnesses to suspects in jig time. Their only option is to go on the run and that they do, although closet woman doesn’t seem to speak. As they cross the US states, the press has a field day with Evie, depicting her as a talented student turned vicious killer. Evie knows the only way she can clear her name is to find out who did it. A suspenseful, new Thelma and Louise road trip.
I Would Die for You, Sandie Jones, Pan, €14.50
Running in a dual timeline, both 2011 in California and 1986 in London, this unusual thriller is charged with the soundtrack of the 1980s. Nicola Forbes lives quietly in California and one day a writer knocks on her door, asking about the downfall of Secret Oktober, Britain’s biggest band in the 1980s. Later that day her daughter goes missing from school, having been collected by Nicole’s aunt. But she doesn’t have an aunt. Nicole is convinced that the doorstepping incident and her child going missing are somehow connected. Reel back to London in 1986 and Cassie, who’s 16, has a hopeless crush on the lead singer of Secret Oktober, Ben Edwards. Ben has no interest in Cassie, but he is interested in her older sister, Nicole, who he hears singing in a bar one night. What will ensue will destroy a family and several other lives. Edge of your seat stuff from a writer who’s got, as they say, ‘form in the game’.
Free, Amanda Knox, Headline, €18.99
Late Late Show fans will have seen Amanda Knox recently being interviewed about her trial and imprisonment in Italy for a murder she didn’t commit. This book is also the story of her developing a cautious relationship with the Italian judge who put her away, convinced of her guilt. Her return to any kind of normality was to be an uphill struggle for many years. She was an articulate Late Late guest and somehow has managed not to let this experience embitter her. The book goes into the nitty gritty details of just what happened, how it happened, and of how she’s finally at peace with it.
Footnotes
A Peek into the Past, Sources and Stories, is an exhibition in the National Photographic Archive in Meeting House Square, Dublin, on Thursday 1 May from 3pm to 4 pm. Free but ticketed, see nli.ie/exhibitions.