The Ruin

I picked up Dervla McTiernan’s “The Ruin” wanting a modern police procedural that actually feels like police work, rather than a string of convenient revelations, and this one delivered. It’s set in Galway, it’s wintry, it’s quietly grim without being gratuitous, and it has that satisfying sense of a case tightening like a screw. Better still, it reads like a complete novel, not a “series pilot” padded with placeholders. It’s dark, yes, but it never slides into misery tourism.

»I haven't seen Garda Reilly in twenty years.' And somehow that simple truth sounded more like a lie than anything else.«

Cormac Reilly is a solid centre of gravity: competent, dogged, and self-aware enough to notice when the institution is show more trying to steer him towards the easy answer. As the “new man” in Galway (transferred from Dublin), he’s both insider and outsider, which gives the story some welcome tension. People talk to him because he’s Garda, and they clam up because he’s not their Garda. McTiernan is very good at that small-town pressure, the way everyone knows something, but nobody knows it all.

»'Cormac, it's the bloody Garda Síochána.'«

What I liked most is the book’s emotional geometry. Aisling’s grief, Maude’s rage, and Cormac’s stubborn conscience aren’t just different viewpoints, they’re different moral pressures on the same events. When the story turns, it’s less about shock twists, and more about watching people reveal what they’re willing to do, and what they’ll tell themselves afterwards.

»Maybe even an accident involving a friend, who had panicked, and in guilt and fear made a stupid phone call to try to hide the truth.«

The prose is clean, but it’s not bland. The dialogue has bite, and the book keeps dropping lines that make a character feel instantly real. It’s also paced well: enough forward motion to keep me reading, and enough pauses for dread to gather in the corners. I liked that the violence (when it appears) feels consequential, not decorative.

»‘I’ve heard good things about you, Reilly,’ the Super was saying. ‘You’ve done very well.’ And that was patronising as fuck.«

If I’m nitpicking, there are a few moments where I could feel the author’s hand nudging pieces into place, and one or two secondary characters are more functional than vivid. Still, as police procedurals go, this is exactly my kind of thing, and it reminded me of the sweet spot between Tana French’s mood and Michael Connelly’s machinery. I finished it satisfied, slightly unsettled, and already queued up book two.

Four stars out of five.

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Cormac Reilly has recently relocated to Galway from Dublin, where he was a member of a highly specialized unit. Now he has to get used to working in a rather usual station again and needs to adapt to a new team. So far, he has only been assigned cold cases, which is rather boring, until one pops up that was his own case many years ago... One chilly night, he was sent to a disrepaired house where the mother of two neglected children had died, apparently from a drug overdose. Reilly traveled to the hospital with the two pitiful children, only for one of them to disappear and never to be found again.

The other main character is Aisling Conroy, a young doctor hoping for a glittering career, when her boyfriend is found dead in the Corrib show more river. His death is quickly ruled a suicide. Aisling cannot really believe that, but does not see any other way. She throws herself into her work again and tries to come to terms with what happened, but then things take a turn...

This novel totally gripped me and the characters and events haunted me whenever I was not reading. I liked how the author combined two genres - it is one part police procedural and one part thriller, and the cold case part as well as the recent mystery are equally compelling. The only aspect that I found wanting was the ending because it felt a bit too rushed, as if the author suddenly had the need to finish. It could have been a bit longer and more detailed.

The Galway/Ireland setting is something out of the ordinary, at least for me. The author also succeeds in introducing social topics and aspects of Irish history into the novel without overdoing it or overshadowing the plot or the characters.

I am happy that I discovered this series and hope to read the second installment soon! show less

I found myself immediately immersed in 'The Ruin'. I'm not normally a fan of prologues but this one, where Garda Cormac Reilly, new to the job and still wet behind the ears in 1993, goes to a spooky ruin of a house and finds two children alone, with their mother dead upstairs, is strongly drawn and memorable. You can see how that moment would still be fresh in Cormac Reilly's memory when one of the children, now all grown up, is found dead.

The rest of the novel is set in 2013 and deals with the investigation into a death that is initially deemed a suicide. What gripped me was the dialogue in the first scene in the police station. It came across as real. The stink of cover-your-arse behaviour wafted off the page. I was immediately drawn show more to Maude and her relentless, angry but controlled questions and her refusal to be put in her place by a police officer who was going through the motions in a patronising way. In addition to the 'something smells bad' reaction to the investigation into the supposed suicide, there was, from the beginning, a sense of something different and intriguing in the background that I was looking forward to finding out about.

'The Ruin' is the first book in a series about Detective Cormac Reilly and he's front and centre throughout the novel. I could see him clearly but what surprised me was that the more clearly I saw him, the less I liked him. It's a sign of how engaged I was with the character that I found myself at first shocked and then curling my lip in distaste at how often and how easily Cormac Reilly lies. It seemed to be his default position. He will say whatever he finds expedient to get people, suspects, witnesses, colleagues, to tell him what he wants to know. He even lies to himself in his interior dialogue, feeding himself a story that keeps him comfortable and avoids hard truths. What I found disconcerting is that his habit of lying wasn't presented as a flaw but as an attribute needed by any detective.

Much of the plot of 'The Ruin' draws upon Ireland's unhappy history of authorities failing to protect vulnerable children from predators either because they were turning a blind eye when powerful people or institutions were implicated or because the rights of the parents and guardians were placed about the safety and welfare of the child. I thought this was well done. It managed to show the damage that was done and give an insight into how it was done without dropping into a rant or a blamefest.

I enjoyed the novel to the end but there were a couple of things that meant that what I was sure at the start would be an exceptional read, dropped my overall rating to slightly above average I felt that at times the plot exposition was getting in the way of learning more about the characters. There was too much telling and not enough dialogue, although when there was dialogue, it was well done. Perhaps to help sustain the suspense, we were never allowed inside Maude's head but I'd still have liked to have heard more about what she had to say. Then there was the plot itself. The satisfying things about the plot were that it was more complicated than it at first appeared, the pacing of the reveals worked well to crank up the tension, and there weren't any loose ends that I could see. The dissatisfying thing was that the plot ultimately depended on a psychopath in disguise. I found it a little far-fetched. It was made more difficult to swallow because there were so few lines of dialogue given to the psychopath. This left me feeling like I'd been briefed on the psychopath's profile without ever meeting them.

'The Ruin' was a debut novel and as such, it was pretty impressive. Even so, I don't think I'll be reading more about Cormac Reilly. show less

I didn't know what to expect going into this detective / mystery set in Ireland.
I can't remember if this was an Amazon recommendation or from BookBub because it's been on my Kindle since March 2023...color me shamed.
I was impressed. It's been a long time since an author kept me turning pages because I couldn't figure out who was responsible and why.
I won't say more because of spoilers, but this was one long red herring after another and even after it became clear through process of elimination WHO, the why stumped me.
Plotting and pacing, characterization all spot on.
Book one in a three book series.
Recommended.

This is a well-written and tightly plotted book that I found completely engaging. I admit however, the some of what I found most appealing about the book would be aspects others might find annoying. I found Cormac and Aisling to be well-drawn. I found them both believable, even in their inconsistencies., although liking the characters is not something I find necessary in a novel. In fact their inconsistencies were part of what I liked best about the novel. The intellectual part of me wants a hard-hitting super-detective but humans aren't really like that. The people who do well and get ahead aren't always the smartest, aren't any different than you or I; they work hard and learn how to play the game. We all do that. We want our heroes show more to be superheroes. We also tend to think we are somehow inferior because we have to learn to play the game to succeed. McTiernan plays on that in this novel. Cormac is also in a difficult, liminal period of his career, and is not sure which steps are the right steps. He stumbles. He has a blind spot. He cannot see the true nature of an old friend. But again most of us are like that in the same way. I was rooting for him even as I was cursing his missteps. I will read the author's next novel when it is released. show less

With its engaging characters, intricate plot, and interesting not-so-often-used setting of Galway, The Ruin kept my attention and got my 5 stars!

At the height of a successful career with the Garda in Dublin, Detective Cormac Reilly relocates to Galway so his significant other, Emma, can pursue a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity in her field. But his new colleagues and the Galway administrators are judgmental and suspicious of him, so he’s been assigned the task of reviewing cold cases, following up on evidence overlooked, questions left un-asked during the initial investigations. One of the cases is his own first death investigation that left two neglected children alone when their drug-addicted mother overdosed. There had been show more questions about the woman’s death at that time, but the subsequent investigation went nowhere, and it, too, had ended up in the cold case files.

Young Dr. Aisling Conroy is devastated when her boyfriend, Jack, is found drowned in the local river after he left their home to think through their future relationship. An anonymous phone call to the police claimed the caller saw Jack jump off the bridge into the water below, and his death is deemed a suicide. But Aisling doesn’t buy it, and neither does Jack’s older sister, Maude, who shows up out of the blue to stir things up down at police headquarters. When circumstances around Jack’s death intersect with Detective Reilly’s cold case, Cormac becomes involved in trying to find answers to both mysteries.

The Ruin was a thrilling police procedural set within the complex workings of the Garda Síochána, the national police service of Ireland. Cormac is a thoughtful and patient man and gets major points from me for being so supportive of his girlfriend, Emma, uprooting from a successful career to start over while giving her the chance to follow her dream. I absolutely wanted him to best those smug colleagues of his.

Aisling Conroy was, perhaps, my favorite character in the story, though. She’s got such a stressful job and has lost her love at the worst possible point in their relationship. Yet, she shows strength and courage that kept her upright and pushing for the truth of what happened to Jack.

The tidbits and details of life in Galway were tantalizing and made me feel like I was walking the streets right along with Cormac. The city became familiar to me, a place I’d never experienced in real life.

The mystery, though, is the thing, and this one had me riveted to the page. The investigation made sense, and I loved how everything from the past and present came together. I liked that there were resolutions to some of the old cold cases as well as the current ones.

With its engaging characters, intricate plot, and interesting not-so-often-used setting of Galway, I recommend THE RUIN to mystery readers who enjoy a police detective-led investigation, strong female protagonists, and Ireland set stories. show less

Writing a multi year, multi crime mystery thriller is incredibly difficult. There are so many ends here and there that need tying in, characters that misbehave and show up where they shouldn’t, challenges in keeping the story arc racing forward as it should.
Dervla McTiernan handles all of this with grace in “The Ruin”- a gripping story of abuse and foster homes and the damage done by people in charge. It’s a very pertinent book. Cormac Reilly is a believable detective- he has his past regrets but he seems human, not wounded. In this story, a case he handled back at the start of his career comes back to him- but why? As the bodies pile up and the members of his team cut him out, he is left to dig about with old fashioned show more detective work. Soon unexpected allies join him and are able to pressure the case toward a terrifying climax.

I loved the closeness of the small town scene, the feeling of past sins going unpunished, the horrible people that hide under veneers of civilization. The main good characters are multidimensional and interesting; the bad guys have depth and history. I’m going to have to read more of McTiernan’s books!! show less