IRISH STEW!

Yet another round (the fifth) with those roguish, brogue-ish Coynes (Irish Love, 2001, etc.), who between endless bouts of connubial carnal pleasuring manage to get in a bit of ratiocination. That is, she does. Dermot Michael’s job is to stand amazed. No question but that Nuala Anne, born McGrail, out of Carraroe in Galway, is the star of the act. Gifted with the beauty of “an Irish goddess,” a world-class singing voice, and second sight (rather underplayed here), she dazzles all who know her, a roster that includes not only her terminally besotted husband, but cops, reporters, priests, and “our friends on the West Side”—a bunch of well-connected hard guys. One of the latter may have put out a contract on Seumas Costelloe, a cordially disliked Chicago opportunist whom Nuala Anne feels, for not very convincing reasons, obliged to protect. On the other hand, the shooter who winged the sleazy Costelloe may have been one of a legion of wronged women or swindled business associates rather than a more organized criminal. As Nuala Anne and Dermot Michael attempt to solve this less-than-intriguing mystery, a rather more interesting puzzle comes their way: the question of what really triggered Chicago’s Haymarket Riot a hundred years earlier, a calamity for which eight innocent men were convicted. The highly speculative solutions to both cases arrive with a disregard for honest detection that could make less committed readers yearn to drop two more Coynes into the fountain.

Flimsily plotted and blarney-clotted, more cute than acute.