The Galway Homicides is an Irish police procedural series I’m not familiar with. But in the usual way of such things I got the offer of a free book, and so I read it. I had the impression from the description that it starred a man/woman police detective team, but if that was true of the earlier volumes, it is so no more. The hero of Murder in the Air is Detective Inspector Maureen Lyons. Her former partner (and current “life partner” in the dreary contemporary parlance) is Inspector Mick Hays, who has been kicked upstairs to the administrative office of Superintendent and plays only a peripheral role in this story.
A Galway property developer named Gerald Fortune crashes his small plane in a West Ireland bog and is killed along with his 17-year-old daughter and a business associate. When it’s discovered that the engine was tampered with, the accident investigation becomes a murder case. Fortune was known as a ruthless competitor who profited from others’ failures, so there is no shortage of possible suspects. But the investigation turns in a surprising direction, and the real killer has an unexpected motive and turns out to have no scruples about hurting anyone – even the investigators’ own families.
The writing in Murder in the Air was fine – author David Pearson writes in a competent, professional manner. He has, however, the annoying habit (which seems to be increasingly common these days) of describing as few of his characters and possible – and when he does, it may be half way through the book. I presume he has reasons for this discourtesy to his readers, but I can’t imagine what they might be.
Being who I am, I was of course conscious of the sexual politics involved in the storytelling. This story takes place in one of those now-common fictional police stations where the personnel are evenly divided between men and women. Maybe that’s how it is in Ireland. Maybe affirmative action has forced those proportions on the famous Gardai. But it was at least good to see that Superintendent Mick Hays was on hand to take care of the rough stuff when called upon. We men are still good for lifting things and opening jar lids, it would appear, even in the age of Trans.
Anyway, Murder in the Air was okay. But I didn’t love it and feel no great impulse to read another in the series.