The Mystery of Ireland by Sheila Connolly

LUCY BURDETTE: Happy St. Patrick's Day! How shall we celebrate? Corned beef? Goofy leprechaun costumes? Shots of Irish whiskey? Or how about, even more fun, a guest post from our friend and Irish expert Sheila Connolly, whose new Irish mystery, Cruel Winter is out this week? Welcome Sheila!

SHEILA CONNOLLY: I was going to put together a short, snappy, chatty post about why I write a mystery series set in Ireland. That "short" part kind of got lost. If you spend any time in Ireland, you'll find that things are slower there, and there are a lot of storytellers, and everyone takes the time to talk. I’ve had a stranger on the street spend fifteen minutes telling me what he likes about the European Union, and another in a pub asked what the Kennedy’s were really like. A very old man told me how my great-aunt Winifred had a new roof put on the Lawless family house to sell it—in 1949. He remembered it well.

When I first saw Ireland, in 1998, I wasn’t a writer. I wasn’t even thinking about being a writer. I arrived in the small town of Leap in a rainstorm, with no room booked for the night, and the first thing I saw was a pub called Connolly’s. It had to be an omen, right?

Put all this together and you'll see why I write a series set in a pub in a small town in the Wild West of Ireland. I learned quickly that pubs are not about drinking, they're about talking.

I made my protagonist a young American woman so she can ask all the stupid questions (yes, the ones that I asked). What do you call this thing? I need to take the bin to the tip? I’ll call you on my mobile. Want a packet of crisps with your pint?

If you go and just sit in a pub or restaurant and listen to how people speak, you realize that the language is soft and it flows. It has inflection and rhythm. People don't say, "Yo, you goin' to town?" They say, “So, you’re after going to the town, then?” It’s no wonder that Ireland has produced so many poets and bards—who were and are important to keeping Irish culture alive. Back before television, itinerant storytellers were welcome guests in rural parts of the country.

How could I not write about Ireland, and that corner of Cork in particular? My grandfather was born there, the last of ten children. Is there such a thing as inherited memory? To me the place felt familiar from the day I arrived. Last year I bought a cottage there, in sight of where my great-grandparents were born, married, raised their children. Every time I turn around in the area I find another relative. It’s the perfect place for a writer, and there are plenty of stories left to tell.

Do you read books set in other countries? What do you expect from them? What things do you like, and what turns you off when you see them on the page?

Readers, don't forget to leave a comment with your email to be entered in a drawing for a signed copy of CRUEL WINTER

Anthony and Agatha Award-nominated and New York Times bestselling author Sheila Connolly writes the Orchard Mysteries for Berkley, the County Cork Mysteries for Crooked Lane Books, and the Relatively Dead Mysteries for Beyond the Page Press. Her new Victorian Village Mysteries from St. Martin’s Press will debut in 2018. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and three cats and has recently bought a holiday cottage in Ireland.

About Cruel Winter:

Snow is a rarity in Maura Donovan's small village in County Cork, Ireland, so she wasn't sure what to expect when a major snowstorm rolled in around Sullivan's pub. But now she's stranded in a bar full of patrons--and a suspected killer in a long-ago murder.

Maura’s been in Ireland less than a year and hasn't heard about the decades-old unsolved crime that took place nearby, let alone the infamous suspect, Diane Caldwell. But the locals have, and they're not happy to be trapped with her. Diane, meanwhile, seeks to set the record straight, asserting her innocence after all this time. And since no one is going anywhere in the storm, Maura encourages Diane to share her side of the story, which she’d never had a chance to do in court.

Over the next few hours, the informal court in Sullivan’s reviews the facts and theories about the case--and comes to some surprising conclusions. But is it enough to convince the police to take a new look at an old case?