The Four Courts Murder - Softcover

Nugent, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0755332458 ISBN 13: 9780755332458

Publisher: Headline, 2007

Synopsis

Justice Sidney Piggott was, everyone in Dublin's law professions agreed, designer-made for being throttled. If ever there was a judge more disliked---make that hated---in the courts of Ireland's capital city, no one knew his (or her) name. So when it comes to finding out who is responsible for the judge's demise, the number of possible suspects makes the task more difficult.

However, Inspector Denis Lennon and his sergeant, Molly Power, are given a lead. On the day of the murder, more than one person saw a mysterious young visitor lurking in the courtroom where Piggott was presiding over a thoroughly boring trial. Who was he? Why was he there? For whatever reason, Inspector, you have your killer. Except that neither Denis nor Molly feel right about jumping to that conclusion. The young man himself, whose thoughts the reader is privy to, is unsure whether he killed Piggott or only imagined it.

With tongue lightly in cheek, Nugent takes his reader from the Four Courts, Dublin's center of law, to rural Ireland, where a local priest has been killed, either by the young man or by a horse. The author introduces us to a married couple who specialize in stolen art and are somehow involved with Piggott.

Bring in a series of high and low Irish characters, add a delightful young German student who gives Molly unexpected assistance, stir them together, and you have a highly seasoned story in unusual settings, told with a small twinkle that will endear readers to this new author.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Nugent lives in Ireland and is a former lawyer who now, as a monk of the order of St. Benedict, is the chief officer of a boys' school in Limerick. Although The Four Courts Murder is his first book of fiction, he has published works of nonfiction. He is finishing a second mystery (still set in Dublin but very different otherwise) about immigrants from Africa, where he lived doing missionary work for a number of years.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"Molly, have you ever done an absolutely classic murder case?"

"I don't know. What is an absolutely classic murder case?"

"You know. The duke of wherever found dead in the library, by his faithful footman, of course, Oriental dagger peeping out between the shoulder blades, so on."

Sergeant Molly Power gazed disapprovingly at Inspector Denis Lennon. "Denis, have you been reading comics again?"

"No comic, Molly, just fact stranger than fiction. Not a duke, a High Court judge. Not in the library, in his Lordship's chambers in the Four Courts. And . . . it was not a knife in the back. That, too, was poetic license. He was strangled."

"Denis, how can you throttle a judge in the middle of the Four Courts?"

"No better place. Big thick walls, solid mahogany doors, it's designer-made for throttling judges."
Copyright 2005 by Andrew Nugent

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0755332458
• ISBN 13: 9780755332458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352