The Priest

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'Returning to Dublin from narcotics work in Spain and Portugal, Detective Inspector Mike Mulcahy is instantly called to the hospital where the victim of a nasty sexual assault is being tended to – and she happens to be the daughter of a high-ranking politician. Jesica didn’t see much of her attacker, and is hardly able to speak of it, but she remembers that he made the sign of the cross over her before he left her, bloody and violated. Mulcahy discovers similarities in other attacks involving a gold cross of some kind, taken from the victims of the attacks. What strange religious fascination does the attacker have? The story is leaked by ambitious journalist Siobhan Fallon, who Mulcahy had been starting to see romantically. When a body is found and the case turns into murder – and the media start calling the killer The Priest – Siobhan starts looking into the attacks by herself…From Publishers WeeklyA sadist targets young women in O'Donovan's derivative second novel, a step down from his debut, White Lion, shortlisted for the CWA's Debut Dagger. When Insp. Mike Mulcahy returns to Ireland after a prestigious antinarcotics posting in Madrid, the contacts he made in Spain make him valuable to the police detectives assigned to identify the brute that assaulted Jesica Mellado Salazar, the Spanish interior minister's 16-year-old daughter, who was found in a Dublin road early one morning with severe burns on her genitals. Before the inquiry can make much progress, Jesica's father has her spirited away to recover at home. When the object used to burn her is identified as a gold crucifix, the target of the probe becomes known as "the Priest." As the fiend claims more victims, Mulcahy's love interest, reporter Siobhan Fallon, hypes the Priest as a national menace. The police follow all too familiar procedural lines, while Mulcahy needs to be a more distinctive lead if he's to sustain a series. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From BooklistThe familiar plot'serial killer pursued by policeman with problems of his own'is given a Dublin setting coinciding with the ending of the Catholic Church's steel grip on Ireland. Indeed, O'Donovan suggests, a bit creepily, that stopping a psycho who mutilates his victims with a crucifix is symbolic of the end of Catholicism's reign in Ireland. But that, like the hunt for the killer, doesn't command O'Donovan's full attention. We have yards of prose about our hero's conflicts with coworkers, whose woes are detailed, too. Same with the woman reporter covering the story, who becomes the hero's sexual partner. She doesn't always get along with her editor. The latter third of the novel, when the clues come together, the red herrings are discarded, and the chase is finally on, finally catches fire. For many, that will be too late. The novel is recommended for readers who like to 'live in' a book and soak up the crisply rendered atmosphere. The problem here is that Ireland without the church has become, as one character says, 'just another country.' --Don Crinklaw