The Good Life: An Inspector Matt Minogue Mystery - Softcover

A native of Dublin, John divides his time between Ireland and Canada, where he and his wife Hanna raise their family. Growing up in Ireland, with a mother from the west of Ireland and a father from Dublin, home was where talk and imagination and character were at to the core of life. Everyone had a story, a song, a joke. John continues to follow the lure of travel. rambling in Ireland’s Burren or Dublin's streets, or hill-walking in southern Austria. Trained as a teacher, he still goes by the axiom that only that which is useless, or can’t be taught, is irresistible.

The brogues and the blarney are back in fine form, but this tale doesn't have nearly the restless energy of All Souls, the previous Inspector Matt Minogue mystery. Brady brings the contradictions of modern-day Dublin vividly to life. On the bank of the now badly polluted canal, upscale young men in flashy cars with mobile phones look for whores, and the short life of Mary Mullen, a working girl with a taste for the finer things, comes to an unpleasant end. A junkie named Leonardo, who survives on Coca-Cola, lager and fear, believes he's being sought in her death and wonders if he should give himself up. Mary was his friend, but his alibi isn't impressive: he was breaking into a parked Golf GTI. Matt, meanwhile, has a pregnant daughter, a flatulent slob of a superior and a hot-tempered subordinate with a criminal twin brother. The bad twin is a close crony of the pair of brothers who are Matt's prime suspects in Mary's murder. Leonardo's torment is tedious, and we learn next to nothing about Mary. The mood is as thick as Guinness, but the plot's as thin as weak tea.
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