Dead Tide

The island keeps its secrets. Until a storm makes sure no one can leave.

When travel journalist Nora Callahan arrives on Inis Mara for the
grand reopening of the Cormorant House Hotel, she expects a quiet
weekend and a travel piece. What she gets is a dead body, a locked
library, and a ferry grounded by an Atlantic storm.

Estelle Briar - formidable widow of the hotel's former owner - is
found dead in her favourite room, a glass of Burgundy still on the
reading table. The local Garda sergeant rules it a cardiac arrest.
But Rachel Thorn, a former pharmacist who knows what grief looks like
and what it doesn't, notices the colour of Estelle's lips. And Nora,
who notices everything, has already started a list.

Trapped on the island with nowhere to go and a killer who knows
they are getting close, six unlikely people find themselves at the
centre of an investigation no one asked them to run:

A journalist who hyperfocuses on exactly the wrong detail at
exactly the right moment. An architect haunted by a loss he won't
name. A retired detective whose past a local sergeant recognises -
and won't forget. A pharmacist in recovery who knows precisely how
this was done. An elegant gallery owner who knew the victim and
didn't say so. A young barrister still learning when to break
the rules.

Behind the murder lies a forged will, a stolen inheritance, and
a secret that Estelle Briar was about to expose - until someone
made sure she never got the chance.

Not all of them are what they seem. But then, neither
is the island.

Dead Tide is the first novel in the Inis Mara Mysteries
series - sharp, warm, and impossible to put down, in the tradition
of Agatha Christie and Richard Osman.