04/18/2022
Taylor’s thoughtful third mystery featuring former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy (after 2021’s A Distant Grave) finds Maggie and her school-age daughter, Lilly, spending the summer on a remote peninsula in Cork with Maggie’s boyfriend, Conor, and his son, Adrien. While Maggie wrestles over whether to move to Dublin to be with Conor and uproot Lilly from friends and family in New York, developers have begun to convert a crumbling Anglo-Irish manor house into a hotel. Months earlier, Lukas Adamik was working construction on the project when he disappeared. Despite a cursory search, locals assumed that Lukas had returned to his native Poland, but after Lukas’s body is discovered off the coast, Maggie investigates and uncovers a long history involving the manor house and its inhabitants. Taylor is adept at balancing police procedure with the domestic drama of Maggie’s mixed family, and her descriptions of the Irish coast and the small town where Maggie is staying will have armchair travelers itching to grab a pint and head to the local pub. Readers will be looking forward to more from this heartfelt series. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Aevitas Creative Management. (June)
Praise for The Drowning Sea
“Terrific. . . Taylor gives readers a vivid, enthralling look at Ireland. These are characters that readers will want to revisit. —Oline H. Cogdill, Shelf Awareness
“Profoundly atmospheric.” —FreeLance Star
"Atmospheric... Taylor creates a rich and gothic atmosphere, with the ocean beating against the treacherous, wind-swept cliffs... The Drowning Sea’s gorgeous backdrop and stalwart sleuth will satisfy and impress mystery readers, particularly fans of traditional whodunits." —BookPage
“Taylor is adept at balancing police procedure with the domestic drama of Maggie’s mixed family, and her descriptions of the Irish coast and the small town where Maggie is staying will have armchair travelers itching to grab a pint and head to the local pub. Readers will be looking forward to more from this heartfelt series.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“Perfect for readers of Wendy Webb, Ellie Griffiths, Sarah Waters, and Simone St. James.” —Booklist
"Taylor delivers a solid, entertaining story with strong characters. Those traits, combined with McMahon's excellent performance, make for a pleasurable listen.” —AudioFile Magazine
“Tana French fans will love this intricate, relationship-fueled crime story and its strong women characters.” —First Clue
Praise for Sarah Stewart Taylor and the Maggie D'arcy Mysteries
“A lyrical prose style that is a joy to read.” —Associated Press
“Readers will relish spending more time with Taylor’s storytelling and her smart characters.” — Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Fans of Elizabeth George should take note.” — Publishers Weekly
“Maggie is a first-class protagonist—an ace investigator and appealing everywoman with smarts and heart." — BookPage
“[Taylor is] a practitioner par excellence of literary crime fiction.” —Fredericksburg Free Lance Star
04/01/2022
Maggie D'arcy resigned as a homicide detective in Long Island. Now, she and her teenage daughter, Lilly, are spending two months at a rental cottage in West Cork, Ireland, with Maggie's boyfriend, Conor and his son. Maggie has major decisions to make about moving to Ireland and starting over with training for the Garda. This trip is supposed to be relaxing, but soon after they arrive, a body is recovered from the water. While the local Garda question townspeople, Maggie meets the investors trying to turn a creepy manor house into a fancy hotel. Because Maggie is no longer a police officer, she welcomes the chance to dive into a cold case involving the manor. Drug deals, murder, and xenophobia involving the Polish are juxtaposed with Maggie's family issues in a complex mystery. VERDICT The sequel to A Distant Grave is filled with stunning local color featuring Ireland. It combines a police procedural with family challenges. The large cast of characters and various crimes can be overwhelming, but fans of the series, and those who appreciate the setting, will welcome the return to Ireland.—Lesa Holstine
Irish narrator Aoife McMahon ensures that accents are authentic for this mystery set in Ireland. Her performance is top-notch, well paced, and features characters who are vocally well defined. Portraying Maggie D’arcy, McMahon’s American accent also is very good. Maggie is a former homicide detective who is visiting Ireland with her unhappy teenage daughter, Lilly. Maggie struggles with the decision about whether to make Ireland their home. Domestic drama gets entangled with a murder investigation when the body of construction worker Lukas Adamik washes up on shore. The locals assumed he had returned to his native Poland, but Maggie begins to suspect otherwise. Taylor delivers a solid, entertaining story with strong characters. Those traits, combined with McMahon’s excellent performance, make for a pleasurable listen. G.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Irish narrator Aoife McMahon ensures that accents are authentic for this mystery set in Ireland. Her performance is top-notch, well paced, and features characters who are vocally well defined. Portraying Maggie D’arcy, McMahon’s American accent also is very good. Maggie is a former homicide detective who is visiting Ireland with her unhappy teenage daughter, Lilly. Maggie struggles with the decision about whether to make Ireland their home. Domestic drama gets entangled with a murder investigation when the body of construction worker Lukas Adamik washes up on shore. The locals assumed he had returned to his native Poland, but Maggie begins to suspect otherwise. Taylor delivers a solid, entertaining story with strong characters. Those traits, combined with McMahon’s excellent performance, make for a pleasurable listen. G.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
2022-03-30
Now that she’s quit her job as a homicide detective on Long Island, Maggie D’arcy assumes her long summer vacation in West Cork will be free of past entanglements. As if.
Maggie’s 17-year-old daughter, Lilly, instantly spots a spectral figure in the window of the cottage they’re renting on the grounds of Rosscliffe House with Maggie’s sweetie, history professor Conor Kearney. The logical candidate is Dorothea Reynolds, a governess to the children of the Crawford family, who vanished from Rosscliffe Manor in 1973. Maggie and Conor’s landlady, Lissa Crawford, a painter who grew up in the manor but sold the big house, is unhappy because she thought Dublin banker Lorcan Murphy and local builder Sam Nevin would refurbish the place, not turn it into a hotel. The customary squabbles between haves and have-lesses are upstaged at least briefly by the discovery on Crescent Beach of the late Lukas Adamik, a Pole who worked for Nevin before he too went missing. The news of his death, which everyone hopes will provide closure for his girlfriend, Zuzanna Brol, instead serves as a prelude to her own drowning. Did she fall, or was she pushed? Though DS Ann Tobin of the Garda Síochána is mourning the fatal overdose of her son, she seems perfectly competent. Even so, Maggie can’t resist taking time out from fretting about Conor’s ex and Lilly’s romance with Lukas’ friend Alex Sadowski to ask a few questions, and then a few more. The two women uncover a diffuse web of intrigue that implicates so many suspects it’s a relief when one of them is finally arrested.
So many crimes and misdemeanors that you’ll need a score card. Nice local color, though.