A Fatal Inheritance (Burren Mystery #13)

by Cora Harrison

Overview

Mara, Brehon of the Burren, must battle superstitious beliefs and fears as she sets out to solve a brutal murder.

When a woman’s body is discovered, strangled and bound with rope to the stone torso of Fár Breige, the ancient stone god which stands sentinel above the haunted caves and ancient fortifications of the Atlantic cliffs, the locals believe it was the god who killed her.
In life, Clodagh O’Lochlainn had been a disgrace to her clan, tormenting her former priestly lover, jeering at her husband, robbing her relatives: but could she really have been slaughtered by a vengeful god, as the local population believes? Abandoning preparations for the celebration of her fiftieth birthday, Mara, Brehon of the Burren, with the assistance of Fachtnan and her scholars, takes up the task of solving the murder. Ignoring the ancient legends, she concentrates instead on bringing a mortal killer to justice. But it’s only when Fachtnan’s small daughter is lost in the labyrinth of passages among the caves that the horrifying truth begins to emerge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727885661
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Series:	Burren Mystery Series , #13
Edition description:	First World Publication
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Cora Harrison published twenty-six children's books before turning to adult novels with the ‘Mara’ series of Celtic historical mysteries set in 16th century Ireland. Cora lives on a farm near the Burren in the west of Ireland.

Read an Excerpt

For a moment it looked to Mara as though the figure of the Fár Breige had suddenly come to life. A slight breeze from the Atlantic blew into the valley and stirred some strands from the petrified head of the god – not tightly curled filaments of lichen, but something more impossible, more supernatural. Tresses of real hair, iron-grey in colour, were blowing out from the skull. As Mara came nearer she could see arms clasped around the stone torso. And she could see colour and texture: woven wool dyed in various hues. Previously there had been only dark grey stone but now, in some strange way the stone seemed to have been turned into flesh. The mist was thinner here and allowed her to distinguish clothing – the white linen fringe of a léine, an over-garment of nettle-green, glimpsed from within a faded, multi-coloured cloak, a real head, bowed down, boots half covered with the coarse winter grass. One of the scholars’ ponies gave a high-pitched whinny and even Mara’s well-trained horse rose upon its hind legs, its ears laid back, spooked by the weird sight. She dismounted, feeling rather than seeing her eldest scholar, Domhnall, take the reins from her hand, and walked up the slight slope. The breeze faded away and the sea-mist swirled down again, for a moment shutting out the two figures, but then it lifted and she could see that this was no apparition. The woman who, ten days ago, had laid claim to these ancient lands, to dún, caiseal, cairn and to the spectre-filled caves in Oughtdara, a valley that from time immemorial had been haunted by the ancient wraiths of the Tuatha Dé; this woman now stood in the centre of her property, clasped to the torso of the Fár Breige. Mara reached out and touched the clammy flesh of the woman’s face. Clodagh O’Lochlainn was as stone-cold as the fearsome god, the Fár Breige himself.

Table of Contents

Contents

Cover,
The Burren Mysteries by Cora Harrison,
Title Page,
Copyright,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Chapter One: An Seanchas Mór,
Chapter Two: Críth Gablach,
Chapter Three: Uraicecht Becc,
Chapter Four: Do Breathaib Gaire,
Chapter Five: Bretha Déin Chécht,
Chapter Six: Uraichecht Becc,
Chapter Seven: Crith Gablach,
Chapter Eight: Cis Fodhla Tíre?,
Chapter Nine: Bretha Étgid,
Chapter Ten: Cóic Conara Fugill,
Chapter Eleven: Bretha Crólige,
Chapter Twelve: Gúbretha Caratniad,
Chapter Thirteen: Gúbretha Caratniad,
Chapter Fourteen: Bretha Nemed Toisech,

Editorial Reviews

01/04/2016
The discovery of the body of Clodagh O’Lochlainn on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, where she’s tied to the stone statue of a god with a noose around her neck, propels Harrison’s solid 13th whodunit set in 16th-century Ireland (after 2015’s Condemned to Death). Just 10 days earlier, Mara, an investigating magistrate and law teacher, presided over a legal case in which Clodagh successfully contested the claims of four of her cousins to her late father’s farm. The cousins asserted that her father promised the farm to them before he went senile, in appreciation of the care they had given him. But the will that the cousins saw locked in a chest of Fergus, another magistrate, had disappeared, and Fergus, whose faculties were in decline, had no memory of making or storing the document, leaving Mara no choice in her verdict. Given this perceived injustice, Clodagh’s cousins are the natural suspects. Harrison again makes the Irish system of justice accessible and intriguing in the service of a clever plot. Agent: Peter Buckman, Ampersand Agency (U.K.). (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Harrison's excellent Burren Mystery series continues to showcase the enlightened legal system of medieval Ireland and the elevated position occupied by educated women in that system"

Booklist

"This is a terrific read for anyone wanting immersion in another time and place."

Sarah Johnson

"Harrison's excellent Burren Mystery series continues to showcase the enlightened legal system of medieval Ireland and the elevated position occupied by educated women in that system"

Booklist