All Souls

Inspector Matt Minogue #4

by John Brady

The unsolved murder of a Canadian tourist from a decade ago will not be left forgotten. 

A drizzly October in Dublin has Minogue daydreaming of the piercing blue skies of Greece: he plans a surprise trip with his wife Kathleen only to be called back to sombre reality by the suicide attempt of his partner in the Garda Murder Squad, Seamus Hoey. To compound his problems, his son has been suspected of gun running. Minogue reluctantly travels to the west of Ireland to help. While he is there, he meets a colourful lawyer, and against his own better instincts, Minogue agrees to do some unofficial digging into the murder of Jane Clark, a young Canadian who was visiting Ireland ten years ago.
Minogue and the groggy, beleaguered Hoey are soon enmeshed in the case of Jane Clark and her lover, Jamesy Bourke, the half-crazed poet and local eccentric who was convicted of her murder. After years of electroshock, Bourke’s memory is returning, and what he remembers is causing panic in more than one of the local people. 
Just as the past is another country, and Hallowe’en brings the return of chaos, Minogue descends into an underworld where he must reckon with with a dark past of violence, revenge and death. Part shaman, part cop, part innocent abroad, Minogue enters a hidden Ireland, where the ancient countryside and its forgotten peoples mutely mock and challenge his wish to make the past disclose its secrets.

Genres: Mystery

426 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

John Brady was born in Dublin, the fictional setting of his acclaimed series of Matt Minogue mystery novels. Brady immigrated to Canada at the age of 20, and has worked as a bank official, RCMP clerical officer and teacher. His seventh Minogue novel, Wonderland, taps into Dublin’s exploding economy and its aftershocks at every level of society. He lives in Toronto. He won the Arthur Ellis Award to the First Best Novel in 1989 for A Stone of the Heart.

Series:
* Inspector Matt Minogue

Reviews

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent police procedural that takes place in and around Dublin and the Burren, a rocky land in the west of Ireland. Inspector Matt Minogue describes it this way: “ Not enough earth to bury a man. Not enough timber to hang him. Not enough water to drown him.” Yet the monks who founded Corcomroe Abbey in the 12th century blessed it, “Holy Mary of the fertile rock.”

Matt, who was raised in the area on a farm he has few ties but family to, is called back by his family to look into his nephew’s legal problems. The book, which was written in 1992,, reveals the fractures of Ireland and the tension between rural and city, that, I suppose, exists just about everywhere. Eoin, Matt’s nephew, proclaims, “T’was the country people brought us our freedom in ‘21. The people of Clare and plenty more that won our land back from the landlords in Parnell’s day. We took pikes in our hands when we had no guns. We deserve every blade of grass that’s under our feet.”

Ostensibly on holiday, Matt’s investigation into the trial and sentencing of Jamey Bourke. Bourke had set fire to his girlfriend’s house hoping she would run out into his arms. Instead she was trapped and died. Supposedly on medication, Bourke has been released, but he has his own agenda. Matt’s investigation is hampered by the attempted suicide of his sergeant and the conflict between The Garda Commissioner Tynan, the local Garda Superintendent, Tom Russell, and Minogues boss Kilmartin on the national murder squad. Each has his own reasons for wanting the other to wind up with mud on his face and Minogue’s quasi-investigation into the shotgun death of Bourke by a German national wanting to buy up local land bring tourism to the area. Then there are the tensions caused by an IRA arms clash and the desire of the local superintendent to ask for “new commando type outfits to patrol the place. The ones trained to eat their children and run through walls with their heads.” It doesn’t help that Eoin is suspected of IRA sympathies. (Remember this was written in 1990 or so.) The investigation soon becomes intertwined with an IRA plot and police corruption. A very Irish book.

Some lovely Irish words and pronunciations: iijit, bejasus, smucking fart.

Marvelous writing and story. It was also fun to mentally revisit some of the wonders of Ireland from our trip last summer.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another high-quality, beautifully written story of Inspector Matt Minogue of the Dublin murder squad, who returns on holidays to his native Clare and is there inveigled into investigating a perhaps wrongful murder conviction from over a decade before the early 1990s setting. Minogue’s out of character school-boyish infatuation with a married woman involved in the case is a small distraction from a highly personal and deeply immersive narrative with keenly-observed characters and situations. These are amongst the most literate of police-procedurals with the pathos of Minogue's decades-before loss very real, as is the contrast between rural Clare and Dublin.

[Stephanie Pieck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspector Matt Minogue leaves Dublin with his wife for a holiday in Clare and points beyond. But an old case of murder, arson, and madness comes to haunt him. When Minogue's partner is injured in a drunken car crash, the inspector returns to the city, hoping to help the man. When the two return to Clare to ask more questions about that long-ago case, there's trouble waiting.
Brady's thoughtful protagonist is a welcome addition to the fictional police force. Lucky for readers that this isn't the only book featuring Inspector Minogue.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: the unsolved murder of a Canadian tourist, Jane Clark, a decade ago is not forgotten. Minogue agrees to some unofficial digging.

[Susan Rothenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complicated mystery that went backward and forward, in which I got a it lost.....

[Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Brady writes so well, I relish every sentence. It really doesn't matter to me if the interrogations go on for a long time, if the plot doesn't seem to move forward fast enough, I enjoy every word of his subtle, sometimes meandering, Irish Guard detective Minogue's thoughts and feelings. This is straightforward police procedural in a very crooked world so the case takes on a very strange and unconventional manner of telling. Not just good writing, this is excellent writing. But don't expect an easy read.

[Jemera Rone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an entertaining series of mystteries because the atmosphere and the dialect is so heavy. This is about a very complicated, unsolved mystery that dates back more than a decade, and also about our hero. who has fallen under the spell of a local beauty married to a local prince. Other plots weave in and out and our hero narrowly escapes death.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Brady knows Ireland and tells a wicked series of mysteries in the Inspector Matt Minogue Series. There is a new one coming in the fall...so catch up.

[Patsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first John Brady, won't be the last. He can write! Plus it's a great visit with the Irish dialect and settings.