Ten days. That is all the time the police have to rescue Rosie Blake. Rosie is a child with cancer who was stolen from the hospital. She can only survive ten days without her medication. The police find the suspect quickly, except he is dead; murdered and Rosie still is missing. It is up to criminal behaviorist Jessie Boyle and her team to find Rosie in time before Jessie dies too.
Doesn't everyone love a good race-against-the-clock mystery? Dunphy creates a setup that is tense and effective and encourages the reader to keep going. To end the opening section with a single-sentence portent—“That would come later.”—is both unnecessary and lazy. There was no need to add an extra push.
Dunphy’s principal characters are interesting and fully developed. You know who they are and how they fit together, giving you bits of their personalities. He knows how and when to interject humor, both in his dialogue and in the situations he describes.
It is unfortunate when the author begins with a plot for a compelling mystery but decides to veer off down a strange path. The plot becomes overly complicated, filled with extraneous historical information, and unnecessary portents, of which there are many. The story gets lost due to a lack of focus. The folklore is interesting, but it overshadows the strength of the plot rather than adding to it.
Dunphy has the talent to write a superb mystery, if that’s his goal, or to write a fascinating book of magic and folklore, or a history of Ireland. Unfortunately, combining the three became messy and convoluted.
HER CHILD’S CRY is the third book in the Boyle/Keneally series. One hopes an author learns and grows with each book. Sadly, that is not the case here.
HER CHILD'S CRY (PolProc-Boyle/Keneally-Ireland-Contemp)
S.A. Dunphy– 3rd book in series
Bookouture, Apr 2022, 343 pp.
Rating: Okay/C
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