How to Fake an Irish Wake: A Cozy Mystery Set in Ireland

by Eliza Watson

It’s been a rough year for 26-year-old Mags Murray. First she learns that her dad isn’t her biological father, a secret her mother took to her grave three years earlier. Then her beloved Irish grandmother passes away at Christmas while Mags is visiting her from the States. Now Mags must host her grandmother’s wake and sell her cottage. A cottage filled with cherished memories. A cottage Mags inherited but her odd jobs won’t enable her to keep. Shortly after the funeral, a young man, Finn O’Brien, arrives at the cottage with an old photograph. Finn believes the boys in the photo are a clue to his father’s identity. Mags can sympathize with him, and because she often helped her genealogist grandmother uncover skeletons in people’s closets, including herself, she agrees to assist Finn. But searching for Finn’s father stirs up trouble. Finn is in a near-fatal car crash that wasn’t an accident. So Mags and her childhood friend Biddy McCarthy investigate why someone wants to prevent Finn from finding his father. Questioning the quirky locals proves a wee bit difficult as several of the suspects were victims of Mags and Biddy’s childhood shenanigans. It might take a fake Irish wake to reveal Finn’s father and the would-be murderer. But what if the two turn out to be the same person?

236 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2020

About the author

Eliza Watson is a USA Today bestselling author, family historian, and former event planner. When Eliza isn't tracing her ancestry roots through Ireland or Scotland, she's at home working on her next novel, bouncing ideas off her husband, Mark, and her cats Frankie and Sammy. Eliza's monthly newsletter features genealogy research advice and info about her latest news, giveaways, and releases! Subscribe at elizawatson.com.

Reviews

[Miriam]

The books are getting better and better , Biddy and Greta are great characters that gave me a few laugh out loud moments and I’m also glad that Greta appeared a lot more in this book, I’m curious to see what’s next for Mags and Biddy, hopefully it won’t be too long until the next book.

[Jayne Tracy]

This is the best Cozy Mystery I have read. Nothing was rushed, the story was clearly mapped out, a few characters were perhaps the "one" they were looking for, and the dialog-I could hear their accents. Delicious.