No Strangers Here

Irish Vet Mysteries, Book 1

By: Carlene O'Connor

Narrated by: Emily O'Mahony

Set in Ireland’s striking, rugged countryside, USA Today bestselling author Carlene O’Connor’s dark, atmospheric new crime fiction series combines the eerie atmosphere of Tana French and Louise Penny with the compulsively taut plotting of Dervla McTiernan and Lucy Foley, as an Irish veterinarian grapples with life, death, family dynamics, and the secrets at the heart of her small community…

On a rocky beach in the southwest of Ireland, the body of Jimmy O’Reilly, sixty-nine years old and dressed in a suit and his dancing shoes, is propped on a boulder, staring sightlessly out to sea. A cryptic message is spelled out next to the body with sixty-nine polished black stones and a discarded vial of deadly veterinarian medication lies nearby. Jimmy was a wealthy racehorse owner, known far and wide as The Dancing Man. In a town like Dingle, everyone knows a little something about everyone else. But dig a bit deeper, and there’s always much more to find. And when Detective Inspector Cormac O'Brien is dispatched out of Killarney to lead the murder inquiry, he's determined to unearth every last buried secret.

Dimpna Wilde hasn’t been home in years. As picturesque as Dingle may be for tourists in search of their roots and the perfect jumper, to her it means family drama and personal complications. In fairness, Dublin hasn’t worked out quite as she hoped either. Faced with a triple bombshell—her mother rumored to be in a relationship with Jimmy, her father’s dementia is escalating, and her brother is avoiding her calls—Dimpna moves back to clear her family of suspicion.

Despite plenty of other suspects, the guards are crawling over the Wildes. But the horse business can be a brutal one, and as Dimpna becomes more involved with her old acquaintances and haunts, the depth of lingering grudges becomes clear. Theft, extortion, jealousy and greed. As Dimpna takes over the family practice, she's in a race with the detective inspector to uncover the dark, twisting truth, no matter how close to home it strikes…

©2022 Mary Carter (P)2022 Recorded Books

Wow! Very different story!

I enjoyed this book. Good story line. Good characters. So different from O’Connor’s other series, but a good change. I hope for more of both stories.

Twisted and dark, a good mystery.

The story was slow to start, but it reels you in. I found myself staying up until all hours to get to the end. A good story for a blustery cold rainy day!

Great Story

I enjoyed this mystery by Carlene O’Connor. The story’s twist is not what I had expected . After hearing the narrator for the Irish Mysteries books this narrator was too soft spoken for a mystery. Though everything else was good. I’m thankful for the narrator’s Irish accent like in the other books. That makes the story even better.

Dark, atmospheric, and engrossing

I’ve read a number of the author’s titles and this was a distinct turn from her previous series. I wasn’t sure at first but the mystery pulled me in. An excellent read for a chilly autumn day.

Took a while to warm up, but worth it

I really enjoyed this story once I got into it. I just finished the author’s Irish village series, which I sought out as a nice bit of fluff to listen to while knitting, cleaning, etc. This book was quite different to the other series — less “cozy” but still not overly dark or grizzly. It took a while to get used to the more subtle narration (the author does not have a terribly thick Irish accent as one reviewer stated, and it’s very easy to understand everything she says), but once I did I actually started to prefer it to the more caricature-like narrative in the village books. Will definitely listen to future books in this series.