BEYOND THE PALE

A bored professor is looking for excitement in her life.

Hollis and Finn Larsson both teach at a university in Michigan. College sweethearts who split up, got back together, and then married, Finn is happy with his life; Hollis, not so much. Hollis never told Finn she was a top student at the CIA academy while they were apart, and now her past has come back to haunt her in the form of David Agnelli, a CIA classmate who now works for Interpol. David shows up asking for a favor—he wants Hollis and David to go to Dublin to buy a manuscript that's supposedly written by Brendan Behan but is actually a fake containing clues that could save another agent's life. Hollis jumps at the chance for a free trip to Ireland and convinces homebody Finn, a Behan scholar, that they’ll have a romantic weekend. Once they arrive in Dublin, all their plans fall apart. When they go to the antiques shop of Eamon Byrnes, who’s supposed to give them the manuscript, he’s not there, and his assistant claims not to know his whereabouts. Hollis is sure they’re being followed by a tall, gun-toting black man. While visiting the theater, they chat with Liam Tierney, a friend of the missing Eamon. Soon after Tierney mentions that there's another Byrnes Antiques shop in Galway, he’s murdered. Unable to reach David and unsure whom to trust, the pair head out of Dublin still hoping to find the manuscript and clear their names with various agencies that think they’re working for the enemy, whomever that is. Leaving a trail of disaster behind them, they treasure the chance to admire the beauties of the Irish countryside before they have to face deadly reality.

O’Donohue (The Double Wedding Ring, 2013, etc.) kicks off a new series with an overly complicated adventure that still boasts plenty of thrills and hints at an exciting future for the reluctantly daring duo.