Crafts and Life

After calling Ireland home for six months, Boston expat Maura Donovan still has a lot to learn about Irish ways—and Sullivan’s Pub is her classroom. Maura didn’t only inherit a business, she inherited a tight-knit community. And when a tragedy strikes, it’s the talk of the pub. A local farmer, out for a stroll on the beach with his young son, has mysteriously disappeared. Did he drown? Kill himself? The child can say only that he saw a boat. 

Everyone from the local gardai to the Coast Guard is scouring the Cork coast, but when a body is finally brought ashore, it’s the wrong man. An accidental drowning or something more sinister? Trusting the words of the boy and listening to the suspicions of her employee Mick that the missing farmer might have run afoul of smugglers, Maura decides to investigate the deserted coves and isolated inlets for herself. But this time she may be getting in over her head…

This book starts with a bang, or at least a slam! Within the first few pages someone comes hurtling into Sullivan's to say that a local dairy farmer has gone missing, leaving his young son alone on the beach.  The whole area pulls together to try and find him … without success, and then people start talking in Sullivan's.

Apparently there is a thriving smuggling situation, with all sorts of people involved (some with small stuff like cigarettes, others with, well, harder stuff like Cocaine), sometimes it is purely passing through but some stays around (to the annoyance of the Gardai).  With people trusting Maura more and more she suddenly finds herself in possession of some information that she needs to keep from Sean (the local Garda) and then before you know where you are at she is arranging something interesting with an ex-fisherman turn distiller, a barman and an accountant!

Add in the fact that her friend Gillian is trying to keep a secret (pretty much impossible in Leap) and you have fun and danger in equal amounts.  Another brilliant book by Sheila Connolly!