It is rather inconvenient when you have a crash in your car.
It is more than inconvenient when the person that stops to see if you are alright is the person you were covertly following.
Suddenly private detective Leo (short for Leonora) Street realises that her latest job is going to be a bit more trickier than she first thought. So she needs some help in watching Michael O’Donoghue eminent obstetrician in Dublin, who his wife believes is philandering. For Leo this is the bread and butter work of being a private detective but that now needs to be spread by someone else.
That someone else is Ciara a teenage goth who can radically change her appearance in almost wonder women esque style to fit in anywhere. So with Ciara on the Doctor’s case, Leo can concentrate a bit more on herself and perhaps have a rest.
But no, picking up her nephew and niece at the local crèche she stumbles across a potential situation where old school friends suddenly behave out of character. Then Leo’s friend television actress Maeve is getting strange phone and although Maeve does not want to get the Garda involved, she goes to some hilarious if not haphazard lengths to find the culprit – she get’s her man.
Not even Leo’s personal life is on an even footing. The last of her family to get engaged, the good Catholic Irish family turned a blind eye to her living with Barry, but they know he is not the one for her. But Leo thinks that he will do, but then someone pop’s up and Leo realises perhaps exactly what she has been missing when Andy takes her to some places she has never been before.
But the case of the Doctor still keeps coming back to Leo and she needs to carry on passed her first objective to see if he is a philandering husband, with some rather thought provoking and interesting answers.
This is the second novel in Pauline McLynn’s repertoire that features Leo Street, and having not read the first, I felt I was slightly missing out on some of the characters backgrounds; Ciara and Father Con both arrived in book one; Something for the Weekend. That said, the book does work fairly well as a stand alone and actually if you are a fan of Irish humour, a bit of a detective fan as well as the family orientated Irish novel then this is certainly a book which you could get a long with. The characters are likeable and that quirky sense of humour shines through in them and the writing.
In fact a book which you could happily have a rest with!
I came to Pauline McLynn’s books by accident whilst browsing in the library, and picked up The Woman on the Bus. I had no idea until reading it that it was the lady off Father Ted, in fact I had never watched the programme although knew of the character and was pleasantly surprised by her writing, this led me to read some more of her novels;
Bright Lights and Promises all about a theatrical agent. Very ironic read when you think of the authors work.
Missing you Already which deals with a daughter looking after her mother who has Alzheimer’s and is deteriorating fast.
McLynn seems to be able to successfully cover the falseness of television, romance, humour, private detection, and serious subjects with such skill that you would be forgiven if you initially thought that all an actress was doing was cashing in on her name, and writing drivel. Not the case here in my humble opinion. Worthy of a read, and I am going to certainly catch up on the rest of the novels I have missed.
The Book Jotter 