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Nailer
In the midland counties of Laois and Offaly, two former members of the religious Order of Saint Kieran, which once ran Dachadoo Industrial School for boys, are murdered within weeks of each other, their bodies found nailed to the floor. Detectives Tom Breen and Jimmy Gorman are assigned to track down Nailer, as the killer is nicknamed. They warn local clerical outcasts that Nailer may be working off a list.
The editor of the national newspaper The Telegraph, delighted Ireland seems to have its own serial killer, dreams of a huge spike in revenues. Meanwhile, investigative reporters Pauline Byron and Mick McGovern are put on the story. As Nailer continues to kill, Pauline surmises that he may be getting revenge or justice for something that happened in Dachadoo decades earlier. As the past is uncovered and the pursuit for Nailer heats up, the shocking truth about Ireland's Church-run industrial schools is revealed.
The editor of the national newspaper The Telegraph, delighted Ireland seems to have its own serial killer, dreams of a huge spike in revenues. Meanwhile, investigative reporters Pauline Byron and Mick McGovern are put on the story. As Nailer continues to kill, Pauline surmises that he may be getting revenge or justice for something that happened in Dachadoo decades earlier. As the past is uncovered and the pursuit for Nailer heats up, the shocking truth about Ireland's Church-run industrial schools is revealed.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
440 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2011
2 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Tom Phelan
10 books96 followersTom Phelan had just turned fifty when his first novel, In the Season of the Daisies, was accepted for publication. One reviewer later wrote, "The most obvious question posed by a novelistic debut with as much resounding vigour as this is: Where has Mr. Phelan BEEN?"
Since then, Tom has penned a memoir, We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It: A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood, and five other novels: Nailer, The Canal Bridge, Iscariot, Derrycloney, and Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told.
His novels deal with such themes as Irish soldiers in World War I, the effects of ancient animosities, returned emigrants, the Irish industrial schools, the priesthood, and life in rural Irish communities.
In We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, Tom looks back on his formative years growing up in Co. Laois, Ireland, and working with his wise and demanding father as he sought to wrest a livelihood from a small farm.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune says, “Tom Phelan's memoir of his boyhood is exceptional….Phelan's prose has an unpretentious beauty.…With rich detail and sensitivity, We Were Rich translates for us a rural world that has disappeared.”
Newsday calls We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, is “a nimble exercise in storytelling…a series of richly detailed vignettes....Plain, honest, funny, occasionally sad and rich in material detail, this [is a] wonderful memoir....This is the real thing.”
Kirkus Reviews gave the memoir a starred review, indicating a work of exceptional merit. It called the book "a tender recollection of growing up on a farm in Ireland” and said, “In precise, vibrant prose, Phelan creates...a captivating portrait of a bygone time."
Publishers Weekly called We Were Rich “a rich and colorful snapshot of the times that shaped Phelan.” And the blog For the Love of Books said, “At a time when we have so much and are satisfied with none of it, Phelan’s story is one of grace and beauty.”
In the Season of the Daisies, which centers on the 1921 IRA murder of a young boy and the effects on the survivors, was chosen for the Discover Great New Writers series sponsored by Barnes & Noble. It was also a finalist for the Discover Great New Writers Award.
Iscariot tells the story of an expatriate
ex-priest who returns to Ireland to face the past and stumbles across the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a young woman.
In the humorous Derrycloney, Tom looks at life in the Irish countryside in the 1940s. He calls the book his "fanfare for the common man and woman" of his childhood.
The Canal Bridge, set in Ireland and France in the First World War, is the story of two Irish soldiers – and the lovers and families they leave behind – as they struggle to survive the slaughterhouse that was Europe from 1914 to 1918. The Irish Independent calls it a “masterpiece…ambitious, accomplished and deeply moving.”
Tom’s novel, Nailer, which Books Ireland calls "a hard-hitting thriller," is about a man determined to get revenge – or is it justice? It is set against the backdrop of Ireland's abusive industrial schools and the collusion between state and church that allowed them to flourish.
Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told is a tale of two returned emigrants and their effect on the Irish village they call home. Shelf Awareness calls it “a masterful portrait of Irish village life disguised as a murder mystery.”
For more information, please see www.tomphelan.net.
Since then, Tom has penned a memoir, We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It: A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood, and five other novels: Nailer, The Canal Bridge, Iscariot, Derrycloney, and Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told.
His novels deal with such themes as Irish soldiers in World War I, the effects of ancient animosities, returned emigrants, the Irish industrial schools, the priesthood, and life in rural Irish communities.
In We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, Tom looks back on his formative years growing up in Co. Laois, Ireland, and working with his wise and demanding father as he sought to wrest a livelihood from a small farm.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune says, “Tom Phelan's memoir of his boyhood is exceptional….Phelan's prose has an unpretentious beauty.…With rich detail and sensitivity, We Were Rich translates for us a rural world that has disappeared.”
Newsday calls We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, is “a nimble exercise in storytelling…a series of richly detailed vignettes....Plain, honest, funny, occasionally sad and rich in material detail, this [is a] wonderful memoir....This is the real thing.”
Kirkus Reviews gave the memoir a starred review, indicating a work of exceptional merit. It called the book "a tender recollection of growing up on a farm in Ireland” and said, “In precise, vibrant prose, Phelan creates...a captivating portrait of a bygone time."
Publishers Weekly called We Were Rich “a rich and colorful snapshot of the times that shaped Phelan.” And the blog For the Love of Books said, “At a time when we have so much and are satisfied with none of it, Phelan’s story is one of grace and beauty.”
In the Season of the Daisies, which centers on the 1921 IRA murder of a young boy and the effects on the survivors, was chosen for the Discover Great New Writers series sponsored by Barnes & Noble. It was also a finalist for the Discover Great New Writers Award.
Iscariot tells the story of an expatriate
ex-priest who returns to Ireland to face the past and stumbles across the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a young woman.
In the humorous Derrycloney, Tom looks at life in the Irish countryside in the 1940s. He calls the book his "fanfare for the common man and woman" of his childhood.
The Canal Bridge, set in Ireland and France in the First World War, is the story of two Irish soldiers – and the lovers and families they leave behind – as they struggle to survive the slaughterhouse that was Europe from 1914 to 1918. The Irish Independent calls it a “masterpiece…ambitious, accomplished and deeply moving.”
Tom’s novel, Nailer, which Books Ireland calls "a hard-hitting thriller," is about a man determined to get revenge – or is it justice? It is set against the backdrop of Ireland's abusive industrial schools and the collusion between state and church that allowed them to flourish.
Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told is a tale of two returned emigrants and their effect on the Irish village they call home. Shelf Awareness calls it “a masterful portrait of Irish village life disguised as a murder mystery.”
For more information, please see www.tomphelan.net.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 5, 2019
In NAILER Irish author Tom Phelan has the courage to once again address an emotionally loaded subject, the church-run Irish "industrial schools," where emotional and physical abuse were rampant. Phelan has written a riveting whodunit that leaves the reader wondering about what constitutes justice and who the true heroes are. The book is beautifully written, the story compelling and powerful.
January 21, 2024
My first Tom Phelan book.
This was the most gruesome murder mystery I've ever read! I loved it.
The characters were likeable and funny and fun. The descriptions of the dead bodies were an
amazing amalgam of imagination based in reality.
The story was well-developed and I never saw the murderer until I did! Couldn't believe it.
I actually felt that he performed a service. I agreed with his concept that these people had to
die before they died on their own.
Brilliant!
This was the most gruesome murder mystery I've ever read! I loved it.
The characters were likeable and funny and fun. The descriptions of the dead bodies were an
amazing amalgam of imagination based in reality.
The story was well-developed and I never saw the murderer until I did! Couldn't believe it.
I actually felt that he performed a service. I agreed with his concept that these people had to
die before they died on their own.
Brilliant!
August 30, 2016
Whatever you do, don't be put off by the glaring error at the very start of this book – two dates used as headings and separated by 12 days yet both Thursdays. That almost made me put the book down. I thought it was going to be another of those novels that blacken the reputations of all independently published books.
I am glad I kept reading, for what Tom Phelan has produced is both a classic murder mystery and an outburst of anger at the events that took place in Irish children's homes during the middle of the last century. His principle characters, two detectives, a journalist and her colleague, are well drawn. The interactions between various combinations of these characters as they race to uncover the truth behind a series of gruesome killings are realistic, the banter filled with dark Irish humour.
Having suggested you keep reading, I must issue a warning. You will need a strong stomach to read the graphic descriptions of the horrors to which the murderer's victims are subjected. You will find it hard, too, to read about the way boys were treated by those into whose protection they had been placed. Tom Phelan has done his research. He has read the various reports into the atrocities committed by members of religious orders in these places. Through his characters he expresses his anger and disgust that such things were permitted to happen.
His most excoriating venom is reserved for those who were in a position to at least suspect that things were not as they should be but did nothing. The child protection workers who took bribes in return for bringing children to the institution, the medical practitioners who accepted spurious explanations for injuries. The senior members of the clergy who, when they should have reported to the proper authorities those against whom allegations were made, denied any wrong-doing so as to safeguard the reputation of the Order.
As a murder mystery, the story moves along at a gripping pace and ends with a satisfying twist. But it is as an indictment of the unforgivable failings of Church and state that Nailer is at its most powerful.
I am glad I kept reading, for what Tom Phelan has produced is both a classic murder mystery and an outburst of anger at the events that took place in Irish children's homes during the middle of the last century. His principle characters, two detectives, a journalist and her colleague, are well drawn. The interactions between various combinations of these characters as they race to uncover the truth behind a series of gruesome killings are realistic, the banter filled with dark Irish humour.
Having suggested you keep reading, I must issue a warning. You will need a strong stomach to read the graphic descriptions of the horrors to which the murderer's victims are subjected. You will find it hard, too, to read about the way boys were treated by those into whose protection they had been placed. Tom Phelan has done his research. He has read the various reports into the atrocities committed by members of religious orders in these places. Through his characters he expresses his anger and disgust that such things were permitted to happen.
His most excoriating venom is reserved for those who were in a position to at least suspect that things were not as they should be but did nothing. The child protection workers who took bribes in return for bringing children to the institution, the medical practitioners who accepted spurious explanations for injuries. The senior members of the clergy who, when they should have reported to the proper authorities those against whom allegations were made, denied any wrong-doing so as to safeguard the reputation of the Order.
As a murder mystery, the story moves along at a gripping pace and ends with a satisfying twist. But it is as an indictment of the unforgivable failings of Church and state that Nailer is at its most powerful.
October 25, 2012
This is not a subject which becomes easier to read with each successive book of like matter. What makes this one a bit more shocking is the lack of remorse even years later by its perpetrators, even to the extent of continued glee by at least one of the criminals. Every perpetrator within seemed to feel as though the acts were justified.
The acts of revenge exacted upon the Irish Catholic Ecclesia by one of its victims several years prior was beyond brutal; It was sickening. But then again...so were the acts the revenge was sought for.
The discovery of who the one is exacting revenge will take the reader by surprise.
The acts of revenge exacted upon the Irish Catholic Ecclesia by one of its victims several years prior was beyond brutal; It was sickening. But then again...so were the acts the revenge was sought for.
The discovery of who the one is exacting revenge will take the reader by surprise.
February 16, 2012
This was a disturbing book that caused me to do a lot of heavy thinking about right and wrong and what makes someone good or evil. I can't say a lot about why I liked this book and why it caused such deep thought without giving away too much, since a lot of the trauma comes at the end. Suffice it to say that I finished the book not sure where my sympathies were: with the killer or with the victims. This book is also disturbing in its detailed accounts of violent death, so if your stomach is weak, it's probably best to skip it.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews