The Death of an Irish Tinker: A Peter Mcgarr Mystery - Hardcover

Gill, Bartholomew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688141846 ISBN 13: 9780688141844

Publisher: William Morrow, 1997

Synopsis

With each entry in this evocative series of Irish police procedurals, more readers become addicted to the adventures of Peter McGarr, the chief superintendent of Ireland's Special Crimes Unit. Now we see McGarr on his home turf--the streets of Dublin--battling his most dangerous enemy: Desmond Bacon, king of Ireland's heroin trade, known on the streets as "The Toddler."

A body is found shackled to the upper branches of the tallest tree in Ireland. The victim is a "Tinker, " one of the mysterious class of itinerant travelers who have roamed Ireland for generations. The murder bears all the signs of being the Toddler's work--but who was the victim, and why was he killed? The answer lies with a Tinker woman named Biddy Nevins. She's the only one who can put Desmond Bacon away--if McGarr can get to her before the Toddler does.

Full of Bartholomew Gill's wonderfully authentic observations of Irish culture, The Death of an Irish Tinker is a suspenseful thriller and gripping mystery.

About this title

Review:

Bartholomew Gill is celebrated for his unsentimental vision of crime on the Dublin streets, and also for his nuanced descriptions of character and Irish places. While The Death of an Irish Tinker is one of the more gruesome installments in the wonderful Peter McGarr mystery series, it is also one of the most powerful in its exploration of the sociopath and drug kingpin known as the Toddler.

The story is revealed by a series of scenes framed in both the present and the past world of the novel. First, Gill shows the making of a killer as he traces the tortured young life of Desmond Bacon, a.k.a. the Toddler. Cutting ahead several years, Chief Superintendent McGarr discovers a dried, nearly mummified corpse high an enormous sequoia on the estate of Eithne Carruthers. Moving back in time again, the reader watches a horrid night in the life of tinker Biddy Nevins. Biddy is a street artist who perfectly reproduces pages from the Book of Kells on the Dublin sidewalks. But on this night her gifted memory becomes a curse; she witnesses the Toddler and his "shades" crush a man's skull under a bus. Before she can fully process what she's seen, she becomes the target of the elusive drug lord who wants to wipe away all evidence of his crime. Biddy flees Dublin, leaving behind her husband and child and the settled life she had begun to craft for herself. But when Biddy's mother shows up in McGarr's office with her scattered version of Biddy's final night in the city, the detective and the young "Rut'ie" Bresnahan begin to weave a trap for the Toddler that leads to a bloody climax.

Gill is a gifted writer who manages to bring a keen understanding of Irish culture to a classic police procedural. Readers are sure to relish the prose and the Irish dialect alongside the chilling tale of a brutal killer. Some other McGarr mysteries include Death of an Irish Sea Wolf, Death of an Ardent Bibliophile, and Death of a Joyce Scholar. --Patrick O'Kelley

About the Author:

Bartholomew Gill authored 15 Peter McGarr mysteries, among them The Death of an Irish Lover, The Death of an Irish Tinker, and the Edgar Award nominee The Death of a Joyce Scholar. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Gill wrote as Mark McGarrity for the Star-Ledger. He died in 2002.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0688141846
• ISBN 13: 9780688141844
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288