The Ruin

Description

The Top Ten fiction bestseller and critically acclaimed crime debut featuring everyone's favourite new detective, Cormac Reilly 'The Ruin is spectacularly good. So CONFIDENT ... excellently written and, at times, heartachingly sad' Marian Keyes 'Corruption, clandestine cover-ups and criminal conspiracy ... as moving as it is fast-paced' Val McDermid 'Dervla McTiernan's first novel outclasses some of the genre's stalwarts making her a crime writer to watch ... fans of Ian Rankin and Tana French will feel right at home' Bookseller + Publisher (4.5 stars) Galway 1993: Young Garda Cormac Reilly is called to a scene he will never forget. Two silent, neglected children - fifteen-year-old Maude and five-year-old Jack - are waiting for him at a crumbling country house. Upstairs, their mother lies dead. Twenty years later, a body surfaces in the icy black waters of the River Corrib. At first it looks like an open-and-shut case, but then doubt is cast on the investigation's findings - and the integrity of the police. Cormac is thrown back into the cold case that has haunted him his entire career - what links the two deaths, two decades apart? As he navigates his way through police politics and the ghosts of the past, Detective Reilly uncovers shocking secrets and finds himself questioning who among his colleagues he can trust. What really did happen in that house where he first met Maude and Jack? The Ruin draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland and asks who will protect you when the authorities can't - or won't.

Dervla McTiernan's debut novel, The Ruin, was a critically acclaimed international bestseller published around the world. The Ruin won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Fiction and the Barry Award for Best Original Paperback, and was shortlisted for numerous other awards. It was on the Amazon US Best Book of the Year list in 2018 and screen rights were snapped up by Hopscotch Features. Dervla's second book, The Scholar, debuted into the Nielsen Bookscan Top 5 on release in 2019, and her third, The Good Turn, went straight to no.1, confirming her place as one of Australia's best crime writers. Born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family of seven, Dervla practised as a corporate lawyer for twelve years. Following the global financial crisis, she moved with her family to Western Australia, where she now lives with her husband and two children. An avid fan of crime and detective novels from childhood, Dervla now writes full time.