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Rating: 
Summary: Early novel lacks the charm for which the series is famous.
Review: From the beginning of the series, Gill has experimented with his characters and plots in an effort to find his métier, gradually increasing his character development, narrowing down his settings by making them more "Irish," and developing increasingly complex plots. This novel, his fourth, unlike its two immediate predecessors (McGarr on the Cliffs of Moher, set largely in New York, and McGarr and the Sienese Conspiracy, set in Italy), is located entirely in Ireland, with all the action connected with the Dublin Horse Show. While the plot is complex, the characters are not, and the charming humor of later novels, such as Death of a Joyce Scholar, the eighth in the series, is absent.
Many threads develop simultaneously and go in different directions. An enormously talented young girl, Mairead Caughey, wants to become a concert pianist. Her mother, the murder victim, is the sister of an IRA member on the run, and both of them have lost their land to a greedy neighbor. Mairead's boy friend, the son of a newly rich member of the Irish Dial, is a drug addict who may be involved in local burglaries. A major horse dealer, paralyzed in an accident, is has staked much of his reputation on the success of his horses in the Dublin show, and his wife is slated to ride the horse which paralyzed him. A priest seems to have more than a passing interest in Mairead, and Mairead herself may not be who she appears to be.
To develop all these threads, Gill introduces innumerable characters, some of whom are connected to just one thread, and some of whom overlap. Because they are not developed, except superficially, their motivations are always not clear, nor are the reasons the action moves in the direction that it does. McGarr, McKeon, O'Shaughnessy, McGarr's wife Noreen, Ruthie Bresnahan, Hugh Ward, and the rest of the detective division of the Garda Soichana all make their appearances, but their characters remain static, since they appear only as police officers and not as developing characters.
A pure police procedural, the novel lacks the quirky characters of later novels, and the very funny scenes that evolve from their interactions. The plot here, though complex and broad, is not very tight, the suspense diffused among too many plot lines. A fascinating novel for those who are interested in observing the development of the series, this novel (also known as Death of an Irish Tradition) is less interesting for its plot and characters than the novels which come later in the series. Mary Whipple
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