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Peter McGarr #4
The Death of an Irish Tradition
The Dublin Horse Show is one of the city's proudest traditions -- a grand institution tarnished this year by the murder of elderly Margaret Caughey. Chief Inspector Peter McGarr is puzzled by the strange death of a seemingly harmless old woman whose apartment contains not a trace of her past life -- and by the heinous crime's apparent links to the upcoming equestrian event. Nearly everyone associated with the unfortunate victim has connections to the Horse show as well, from dowdy Margaret's racetrack gadfly brother, to her surprisingly elegant daughter who's scheduled to compete . . . to an ex-IRA contract killer. And with race day rapidly approaching, McGarr knows he must work quickly to untangle this knotted skein of deadly secrets. For if he falters, the tireless detective fears that more blood may be spilt -- perhaps even his own -- before the riders leave the gate.
368 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
13 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Bartholomew Gill
31 books28 followersBartholomew Gill is the pen name of Mark McGarrity.
Mr. McGarrity was born in Holyoke, Mass., and graduated from Brown University in 1966. He studied for his master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and never tired of mining the country for material.
''One of the things they gave me,'' he once said of his books, ''is a chance to go back to Ireland time and time again to do research.''
He was also an avid outdoorsman, and since 1996 worked at The Star-Ledger of Newark as a features writer and columnist under the McGarrity name, specializing in nature and outdoor recreation. While continuing to produce McGarr novels, sometimes at the rate of one a year, Mr. McGarrity produced several articles a week for the newspaper. He wrote about a variety of topics ranging from environmental issues to the odd characters he encountered in his travels, like an Eastern European immigrant who grew up watching cowboy movies and found his dream job playing Wyatt Earp in an amusement park in rural New Jersey.
Mr. McGarrity also published five novels under his own name.
Series:
* Peter McGarr Mystery
Mr. McGarrity was born in Holyoke, Mass., and graduated from Brown University in 1966. He studied for his master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and never tired of mining the country for material.
''One of the things they gave me,'' he once said of his books, ''is a chance to go back to Ireland time and time again to do research.''
He was also an avid outdoorsman, and since 1996 worked at The Star-Ledger of Newark as a features writer and columnist under the McGarrity name, specializing in nature and outdoor recreation. While continuing to produce McGarr novels, sometimes at the rate of one a year, Mr. McGarrity produced several articles a week for the newspaper. He wrote about a variety of topics ranging from environmental issues to the odd characters he encountered in his travels, like an Eastern European immigrant who grew up watching cowboy movies and found his dream job playing Wyatt Earp in an amusement park in rural New Jersey.
Mr. McGarrity also published five novels under his own name.
Series:
* Peter McGarr Mystery
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 18, 2017
McGarr at the Dublin Horse Show* (1979) by Bartholomew Gill was a very disappointing read. After having read The Death of an Ardent Bibliophile (pre-blogging, so no in-depth review) and having fond memories of it as well as having given it a four-star rating, I was looking forward to this one. The St. Louis Post Dispatch didn't help matters with their "McGarr is a man mystery fans should get to know...a quiet, unassuming sleuth with powers of deduction rivaling Sherlock Holmes himself" blurb on the back cover. Along with a summary that makes it sound like a nice, normal police procedural mystery. After all--according to the back cover, McGarr is supposedly investigating a nice, quiet strangling of an older lady in a tidy little apartment.
Who would want to kill old Mrs. Caughey? The simple Dublin housewife had never harmed a soul. She lived alone with her beautiful daughter in a tidy apartment that contained not a trace of the past...a past that was suddenly revealed to be a cauldron of greed, passion, and revenge...a dangerous bress that would come to a boil at the Dublin Horse Show, turning an elegant pageant into a chilling spectacle, plunging McGarr into a pounding race against time.
No muss, no fuss. Not even a drop of blood. What I got was an Irish gangland/IRA shoot-em-up with more bodies lying around with bullets in them than I can remember. Oh, sure, Mrs. Caughey does get strangled and McGarr does investigate that murder but that leads him to all the IRA/Irish gangster business with a dose of revenge-style killing and a grand finale at the Dublin horse show.
Now, of course, Goodreads gives a synopsis from a different edition of the book above and it is a little more upfront with the reader. It does seem to me that Murder Ink misrepresents things a bit--the kinds of passion and revenge I was expecting was more personal and less bloody. One thing Gill does do is offer up several suspects--everyone from Margaret Caughey's racetrack hound brother to the daughter Mairead who may have wanted more freedom to the daughter's boyfriend with shady connections to the priest who taught Mairead piano to the rich race horse owner who bought the Caughey's land for a song. Any of these may have had even deeper motives and any of them may have connections to the IRA. McGarr just needs to figure out how it all ties together.
My ★ rating is really quite personal this time--primarily because I felt tricked by the synopsis on my edition, but also because IRA/gang-type shoot-em-ups really aren't my cup of tea. It's quite possible that someone who goes into the book knowing the type of crime novel it is (I can't really call it a mystery in the lines that I normally read) may quite enjoy this.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
Who would want to kill old Mrs. Caughey? The simple Dublin housewife had never harmed a soul. She lived alone with her beautiful daughter in a tidy apartment that contained not a trace of the past...a past that was suddenly revealed to be a cauldron of greed, passion, and revenge...a dangerous bress that would come to a boil at the Dublin Horse Show, turning an elegant pageant into a chilling spectacle, plunging McGarr into a pounding race against time.
No muss, no fuss. Not even a drop of blood. What I got was an Irish gangland/IRA shoot-em-up with more bodies lying around with bullets in them than I can remember. Oh, sure, Mrs. Caughey does get strangled and McGarr does investigate that murder but that leads him to all the IRA/Irish gangster business with a dose of revenge-style killing and a grand finale at the Dublin horse show.
Now, of course, Goodreads gives a synopsis from a different edition of the book above and it is a little more upfront with the reader. It does seem to me that Murder Ink misrepresents things a bit--the kinds of passion and revenge I was expecting was more personal and less bloody. One thing Gill does do is offer up several suspects--everyone from Margaret Caughey's racetrack hound brother to the daughter Mairead who may have wanted more freedom to the daughter's boyfriend with shady connections to the priest who taught Mairead piano to the rich race horse owner who bought the Caughey's land for a song. Any of these may have had even deeper motives and any of them may have connections to the IRA. McGarr just needs to figure out how it all ties together.
My ★ rating is really quite personal this time--primarily because I felt tricked by the synopsis on my edition, but also because IRA/gang-type shoot-em-ups really aren't my cup of tea. It's quite possible that someone who goes into the book knowing the type of crime novel it is (I can't really call it a mystery in the lines that I normally read) may quite enjoy this.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
September 24, 2018
Too many characters at once to sort out.
December 1, 2022
Another excellent detective mystery that keeps you guessing right up until the end.
November 4, 2024
A complicated and very dark tale.
February 23, 2017
The U.S. title for #4 in the series. Original title: Death of an Irish tradition
August 23, 2014
Of the some half dozen of Gill's McGarr detectives I've read, this one is by far the weakest. The plot was exceedingly difficult to follow, but this may very well just have been me. Or perhaps the book required a better knowledge (currently non-existent) and understanding (paltry) of Irish social history and of horses than I possess. I've noticed this before, having had the hardest time plowing through Somerville and Martin's Some Confessions of an Irish R.M.
April 4, 2009
weak and learing
February 7, 2012
I read this under another title: Death at the Dublin Horse Show. It's the first of the Bartholomew Gill mysteries I've read. I may read another. Hard to say.
June 11, 2018
Another great McGarr book!!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews