This week: murder most foul in a quiet village; and a missing child in the Australian outback

This week there’s a novel about murder most foul in a quiet, peaceful village in Cork that’s not short of an ironic smirk or two, and a small town in the Australian outback is where a young girl goes missing on her way home from school.

A trans woman who has left Dublin for Copenhagen encounters her old girlfriend from Ireland, and finally there’s a book by a woman who left an abusive relationship and lost herself – or at least half of herself – on her way to happiness and health.

Dirty Laundry, Disha Bose, Penguin Viking, €15.99

Remember Desperate Housewives? Who could forget it, and whether we admitted to watching it or not, we were all hooked. It brilliantly depicted the lies and secrets that lurked in the upmarket suburban Wisteria Lane. And it was funny. If you crossed Desperate Housewives with Sharon Horgan’s inimitable Motherland and set the story in Cork, you’ve got the raw ingredients for Disha Bose’s debut novel.

Three 30-something mothers are neighbours on their quiet Cork suburban street and they couldn’t be more different. Ciara is a god-help-us Instagram influencer, splaying her (sponsored) perfect life on the internet daily, along with her perfect kids and husband, perfect house, perfect skin care regime, perfect organic diet, yada yada yada, and the poor girl’s as vapid as a Fairy detergent ad.

Mishti has been flown in from Calcutta as a match for her frosty and distant doctor husband who barely acknowledges her presence, much less that of their little daughter Maya.

Lauren lives with her brood of noisy kids and a feckless husband who wouldn’t meet a mortgage payment if his life depended on it.

When queen bee Ciara is found murdered in her home, the fun really kicks off. This whodunnit is funny and wry and you can’t see what’s coming. A stylish, accomplished debut.

Dirt Town, Hayley Scrivenor, Pan, €13.99

Australia is fast gaining ground as the new Scandinavia when it comes to Noir, and some marvellously written thrillers have reached our shores, and this debut novel from the sunburnt country is as dark as it gets. When 12-year-old Esther goes missing on her way home from school, nobody misses her as much as her close friend Veronica (Ronnie). This is a tiny, dried-up outback town with one school and a clutch of farms barely holding on in the arid spring of 2001.

Ronnie is determined to find out what happened, especially as their mutual school friend Lewis mentions that he saw Esther talking to a man on the afternoon of her disappearance. But why won’t Lewis tell this to the cops?

Big city missing-persons detective Sarah Michaels is assigned the case and is doing her best while wrestling her own demons. Michaels knows she’s not being told the full story as it becomes apparent that this close-knit community harbours its own secrets. This superb novel is just out in paperback, the hardback edition appeared here last June. It has received absolute rave reviews from fellow crime writers, every one of them well deserved.

Wild Geese, Soula Emmanuel, Footnote, €17.99

Phoebe is an Irish trans woman who has made a home for herself in Copenhagen and lives with her skittish dog, Dolly. She is three years into her transition at this point and although Copenhagen is beginning to feel like home, Phoebe is lonely. She’s halfway through a doctorate that she says her life has already outgrown, but she plods on.

At exactly 19 minutes past seven on a regular Thursday evening as Phoebe is settling down on the sofa with her dog, her doorbell rings. Grace Keaney, an ex-girlfriend from Ireland, and from another life altogether, is on her doorstep.

They spend the weekend together, reminiscing, attempting to look to the future, each feeling something new for other as the carefully time-stamped weekend progresses. There’s nothing earth-shattering here, this isn’t a big opera of a novel. But it is so delicately and elegantly written, it takes your breath away.

All of the mess and the pain and the quiet desperation and the hope of simply living is packed into this short novel and into a single, profoundly weighted weekend. The writing is luminous and graceful, there’s real poetry here. A gorgeous literary debut.

Jen’s Journey, Jennifer Carroll, Gill, €22.99

Jennifer Carroll weighed in at almost 26 stone when she fled an abusive relationship after the birth of her son. She got herself a personal trainer, embarked on a healthy diet and lost an unbelievable 12 stone in weight. She is an Instagram influencer (god-help-us) but I don’t know her so I won’t hold it agin her!

I do know, however, that a lot of our unhealthy eating habits are not born of hunger but of more complex conditions, usually connected to our psychological and emotional states. When Jennifer Carroll felt trapped, she ate. And she was trapped for a long time. But she managed to get herself and her baby to a women’s refuge and slowly regained her mojo.

This book, therefore, is not a run-of-the-mill ‘how to look like Gwyneth Paltrow’ kind of thing. This is essentially the story of one woman’s escape from a man’s tyranny and claiming freedom for her son and herself. It’s not a memoir and it’s not a self-help book and it’s not a recipe book or a fitness manual, but all of these elements are included, with great generosity on the author’s part, along with a definite message from her: if she can do it, so can you.

Footnotes

Poet Tom French, who works in the Navan branch of Meath County Library, has had his poetry collection, Company, shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize, the winner of which will be announced at Listowel Writers Week on May 31. With only three collections shortlisted, and a first prize of €12,000, this award is a game-changer. The judges said: ‘Company excels and delights with its spirited lyricism and through a brilliant illusion of empathic conversation on the page.’ Fingers will be crossed.

And this is a reminder that most public library branches have book clubs. Book clubs take the solitude out of reading, as the clubs get together and have spirited (sometimes even heated!) conversations about the book of the month, freely available through the library lending service. Contact your nearest branch for details.