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 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, 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're getting close, six unlikely people find themselves running an investigation no one asked them to run: a chaotic journalist with a gift for the wrong detail at 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 discuss; a pharmacist who knows exactly how this was done; a gallery owner who knew the victim — and didn't say so; and a young barrister still learning when to break the rules. Behind the murder lies a forged will, a stolen inheritance, and a secret Estelle was about to expose — until someone made sure she never got the chance. Dead Tide is the first novel in the Inis Mara series: sharp, warm, and elegantly plotted, in the tradition of Agatha Christie and Richard Osman.