A Cup of Irish History with Your Mystery
If you need a summer reading list, how about exploring the history of Ireland by diving into one of the many mysteries set on the Emerald Isle? Here are five authors I really like. Two of these writers set their mysteries in far-off times -- the 7th and 16th centuries -- while the others weave Irish history into their contemporary stories.
Peter Tremayne's mysteries, set in the middle of the 7th century, feature Sister Fidelma, a well-educated agent of the Irish legal system, who is a nun and the sister and daughter of Kings of Munster, one of the ancient kingdoms of Ireland. Whereas she believes in logic and science, her companion Eadulf, an Anglo-Saxon monk, is a bit more pragmatic and down-to-earth than Fidelma. So they make a good pair of "detectives." Often the mysteries they solve are tied to the conflicts that arose when the pagan beliefs of the Druids came face to face with the new concepts of Christianity. Actual places especially in the south and west of Ireland are presented as they would have been almost 1400 years ago. The castle of the Fidelma's brother the king on the Rock of Cashel figures prominently in several of the books and Master of Souls is set on the Dingle Peninsula, a truly magical place even today. Tremayne has written 21 Sister Fidelma mysteries.
Cora Harrison's My Lady Judge is set in 1509 in the Burren, the barren landscape on the west coast of Ireland that has been likened to a sci-fi wasteland, dotted with prehistoric structures. The book provides a picture of Gaelic Ireland, especially the Brehon Rule of Law, the ancient Irish legal system. Mara, the main character, is based on a real-life female Brehon (judge) whose case notes are in the British Library. The Brehon legal system emphasized mercy; kings and chiefs were elected and held accountable; slavery was not tolerated; and women were accorded respect and rights and could enter most professions, including warrior, judge and ruler. This book is set just before the vicious Tudor land-grab and provides a vivid contrast to the period when King Henry VIII of England began to covet Ireland. Harrison has written five books featuring Mara.
Erin Hart's Haunted Ground takes place in an area where bog bodies are discovered and must be investigated using modern-day forensic techniques. These centuries-old bodies are usually ancient Irish people recovered from their deliberate or accidental graves. Hart ties these discoveries to contemporary crimes. The novel was inspired by actual findings and interweaves Celtic culture, folklore and traditional music into the mystery. Traveling around Ireland, you can see peat bogs and stacks of cut peat in many locations, and the National Museum in Dublin has a display of actual bog bodies dug up in Ireland. Hart has written three books tying archeology to pathology in Ireland.
Benjamin Black (pseudonym for Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist John Bannister) sets Christine Falls in 1950s Dublin. Quirke, the main character, is a very human, flawed pathologist who faces his own demons while searching for answers to the questions raised by the deaths of the people he examines. Those searches take him from Ireland to Boston and expose a seamy side of the actions of Dublin's Catholic society, some of whom are Quirke's family members. Black has written three mysteries featuring Quirke.
Bartholomew Gill's mysteries provide a broad look at Ireland's people, places and issues. The books include some of the usual topics we've come to expect in Irish fiction and film -- such as the Troubles, the IRA, emigration -- but several of the books have ties to Irish history. In Death of a Joyce Scholar, Peter McGarr, the chief of the murder squad of the Irish police, must study James Joyce's difficult novel Ulysses, set in 1904 Dublin, to discover clues for tracking down a contemporary murderer. In A Death in Dublin, McGarr learns about the history of illustrated texts as he seeks to recover the Book of Kells stolen from Trinity College Library. Gill wrote 16 McGarr books set in Ireland before his death in 2002.