The Death of an Irish Sinner
A Peter McGarr Mystery
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Local benefactress and celebrated biographer Mary-Jo Stanton is a supplicant to death -- left lifeless on her knees in a patch of daffodils, a barbaric religious implement wrapped tightly around her neck. A clergyman has approached Peter McGarr, requesting that the Chief Superintendent quietly investigate this outrage that occurred at Barbastro, the slain grand lady's compoundlike Dublin estate. Murder is McGarr's business, but this one might be his undoing, as it draws him ever-closer to Opus Dei. A secret order of religious zealots devoted to enforcing the Lord's edicts no matter what the cost in money -- or human life -- it has ensnared the dedicated policeman in its lethal web. And now its madness is reaching out across a century to touch the place Peter McGarr is most vulnerable: the precious heart of his own adored family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Inspired by Charles Kuralt's "On the Road" reports for CBS News 20 years ago, Idaho journalist Johnson pitched an idea to his editor at the Lewiston Morning Tribune: a column based on the idea that a reporter "could go to the phone book, pick a number randomly, and do a story on whoever answers." More than 800 columns later, Johnson's brand of "everybody has a story" journalism has achieved a certain national notoriety, having been parodied by comic luminaries like David Letterman and Jon Stewart. In this, his first book, however, Johnson's stories fall flat. Instead of fascinating in-depth profiles, Johnson uses only brief summaries of his subjects' lives to relentlessly explain the ups and downs of his own life (his first jobs, his first divorce, his love of nature, his love of women, etc.) Unfortunately, Johnson doesn't offer the same perspective on his own story as he does, say, on Florie, a ZZ Top loving twice-divorced mother of five. His personal insights are facile ("I love to hear about the old days and look at historical pictures"), and his reporting lacks depth ("Here was a man who, with a cultivator and other gardening implements, had made the world more beautiful"). A collection of his best columns would have been a much better way for Johnson to show how he learned that "the most important lessons are found not at the pinnacle of what we consider news, but amid the routine ups and downs experienced by everyday people."
