Dervla McTiernan

Cormac Reilly is about to reopen the case that took him twenty years to forget … The stunning debut novel from your new favourite crime writer.

Responding to a call that took him to a decrepit country house, young Garda Cormac Reilly found two silent, neglected children – fifteen-year-old Maude and five-year-old Jack. Their mother lay dead upstairs.

Since then Cormac’s had twenty high-flying years working as a detective in Dublin, and he’s come back to Galway for reasons of his own. As he struggles to navigate the politics of a new police station, Maude and Jack return to haunt him.

What ties a recent suicide to that death from so long ago? And who among his new colleagues can Cormac really trust?

Betrayal is at the heart of this unsettling small-town noir and the Ireland it portrays. In a country where the written law isn’t the only one, The Rúin asks who will protect you when the authorities can’t – or won’t.