12 Feb 2020

#Review: THE SCHOLAR by Dervla McTiernan

THE SCHOLAR

Author: Dervla McTiernan
Series: Cormac Reilly #2
Source: Purchased from Audible
Publisher: Sphere
Publication Date: March 7, 2019
Overall Rating:
Diversity Rating:

Summary:
When DS Cormac Reilly’s girlfriend Emma stumbles across the victim of a hit and run early one morning, he is first on the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID, that of Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland’s most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy – it has funded Emma’s own ground-breaking research. The investigation into Carline’s death promises to be high profile and high pressure.

As Cormac investigates, evidence mounts that the death is linked to a Darcy laboratory and, increasingly, to Emma herself. Cormac is sure she couldn’t be involved, but how well does he really know her? After all, this isn’t the first time Emma’s been accused of murder...

Purchase:

Amazon | Chapters | TBD

This one was okay. I think if it hadn't been for the fact that I had to read it for the book club, I probably wouldn't have (1) picked it up or (2) finished it.

It was kind of disappointing to me because really I just needed to read the first couple chapters to get the gist of what was going on, maybe one or two chapters in the middle, and then the last five chapters and that's it.

Which is pretty par for the course for mystery/detective novels, but still really disappointing. There was no big "twist" or anything - it was all pretty predictable.

I thought that the semi-queer bait of lesbians was not in good taste though. I thought the fact that it was said because a man was rejected and then it wasn't really proven one way or the other and then said casually like "well they COULD have been lesbians" was really off putting. Either commit to lesbians or leave that section out.

Overall, I am not sure I would recommend this - and while it was a standalone, I'm sure there would have been more context to this story if I had read the first one. This is a meh from me!