Clare O'Donohue

First in a new series by well-established cozy writer, Clare O'Donohue, this book takes the reader on a wild roller-coaster ride through the dark world of international espionage. Two married small town college professors are in a bit of rut with their marriage. Suddenly, her long-forgotten beau, from her early days training with the CIA, has approached her and her husband to handle an "easy in-easy out" covert operation in Dublin, Ireland. She's eager for the adventure, but he's not. show more However, he and his keen knowledge of Irish literature are the key variables needed to execute the operation. Once on the ground, they try and make contact with another key player and it just gets worse for them from there on out.

The story holds lots of red herrings, various spies, charming Irish folk and provides a vast tour across Ireland - from the bustling city of Dublin, across the Burren, through charming villages to the edge of the sea. Ms O'Donohue captures the heart of the Irish people and landscape's beauty with her painterly writing style. The story was cozy and charming - just the way I like it!

I am grateful to author Clare O'Donohue, publisher Midnight Ink Books and Kings River Life Magazine for having provided a free copy of this book. Their generosity, however, did not influence this review - the words of which are mine alone. show less

O’Donohue puts her journalistic skills to work building her new character, Kate Conway, a Chicago television reporter and begins her second series with a rollicking good start.
Conway produces one of those true crime local cable shows and is used to dealing with dead bodies and missing people but when the dead body is her soon-to-be divorced husband who just happens to die while she is starting up a fledgling new show on finding missing people then local homicide detectives find cause to show more question her motives and alibi.
Throw into the mix the husband’s new fiancé, who all of a sudden wants to be Kat’s new ‘best friend’, a old high school jock friend and unhappy in-laws Kate finds her personal life as much as a juggling act as the new television show. When the body of the girl she is reporting on as missing shows up and Kate starts to receive death threats of her own she has to figure out is the hidden danger from the results of her reporting or from someone a little closer to her personal life.
O’Donohue exhibits a masterful approach with her classic red-herrings and carefully placed foreshadowing as she drags us through the muck-racking of yellow journalism but still finds a way to keep as close as family when worrying about her protagonist. This novel kept me interested and still left room for unexpected twist in the end. This will be a series worth collecting. show less

Another beautifully written, well thought, and plotted cozy.
I went into this wondering how I was going to stay awake reading about the obviously boring subject of quilting in New England. I was already stifling a yawn when suddenly the skeleton showed up and suddenly no one in the town of Archers Rest was boring anymore.
O’Donohue carefully manipulates the small town folklore with the modern day gossips, and using the cliff-hanger approach leaves us at the end of each chapter with a little show more tidbit of new information that makes you have to read just one more chapter.
Nell, grand-daughter of the towns quilting shop owner, Eleanor, is the town’s nosy snoop. She gains a little insider information into the curious goings on in town through pillow talk; her boy-friend in the town’s police chief. When the skeleton is discovered in the grandmother’s rose garden she has to fight to defend Eleanor from the rumors that she was the murderer. It turns out that everyone in town is harboring a secret and one-by-one Nell overturns the rock that everyone has hidden that secret under.
When she receives written threats on her own safety, and discovers that someone is secretly following her around town Nell turns up the heat. Not known for her tact, she treads on more than one person’s toes on her way to the undeniable truth. When an attack on the niece of the dead man leaves her unconscious, lying in a pool of blood, the amateur sleuth realizes that the murderer is still alive.
In the fashion of a modern day Jane Marple on steroids, Nell puts together the final piece of the puzzle just in time to stage the quilting display for the town carnival and have the suspect arrested simultaneously. show less

The secret to O’Donohue’s Kate Conway character is that she is the antithesis of O’Donohue. The author writes with an energy and vivaciousness that the protagonist lacks. Conway is alone in life, settling into a disturbing trend of inertia and curt to the point of being rude. Even her appearance is downtrodden and dowdy. That she is getting over the sudden death of her husband who she discovered was cheating on her is a decent excuse.
In the second of the Kate Conway series, we find our show more heroine disgusted with her recent free-lance television production and yearning for a program with a little more sustenance. When she hooks up with a program that wants her to interview two former death-row inmates, their sentences reduced to life without parole, she heads to the penitentiary immediately with her camera and recording crew in tow.
Simultaneously she receives a call wanting her to take on a second job, taping a series about up-and-coming restaurants that are opening in the area. When she finds out that the woman her husband was cheating on her with is one of the investors, and then discovers the rest of the motley crew that are involved with the project, including a local mobster and his wife, she probably should have listened to that inner voice that initially said no, but hey a girl has to pay the rent, right?
Inevitably problems come up with both film locations that indubitably are linked together by a thread; Kate has to figure out which group is lying more than the other without putting her job, and perhaps her life, on the line.
In typical O’Donohue fashion, we are led through a trail of lies and deceit, red herrings and dead bodies in this modern-era cozy and brilliantly woven tale of corruption, unrequited love and life in general, with or without parole. show less