The Irish village of Duneen is a quiet unheard of place, until housing developers unearth bones on the site of the old Burke farm.
Speculation is rife among the villagers as to whom the bones may have once been. Most say Tommy Burke, but others claim he was seen leaving on a bus decades ago.
For Sergeant PJ Collins, overweight and underused village Garda, it seems like the ideal case to make his name at last, but with everyone under suspicion it's not proving to be as straightforward as he thought.
Are the remains that of Tommy, and if they are which of the friendly villagers has a predilection for murder?
This is the debut novel from well known Irish comedian Graham Norton. In part this is why I requested an ARC but the blurb had me intrigued as well.
The writing itself is well done, but I often found the story occasionally wandered off to places that weren't wholly necessary and distracted from the suspense. The characters were likeable enough but I found it hard at times to empathise with them. Especially Evelyn, the way she reacted seemed odd for a woman in this era and much more reminiscent of a bygone time.
All in all this novel was a good read, if fairly predictable, and I had expected more from the comic.
** Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton, via NetGalley, for this ARC **