False Mermaid
by Erin Hart
ISBN:
978-1-4165-6377-8
a 2011 trade
paper release from
Scribner. 318
pages
As I and others
sometimes remark, Crime Fiction writing is really about the creation of
fantasies, regardless of how realistic and true to life the stories may be. Which
brings me to the latest mystical, mysterious story from the mind of that very
Irish author, Erin Hart. I will say I was not enthralled by her first, “Haunted
Ground.” But one of the joys of following authors is to experience their
development and improvement. This is a most elegant and excellent novel.
A warning; if you
aren’t interested in shape shifters, ancient myth and legends, and events that
defy rational explanation, or the intense struggles of the human heart, you
might wish to avoid this exceptional intricate and enthralling story of murder
and redemption. The ancient legends of the selkie, that astounding alluring creature
from the sea that we see as a playful, sometimes raucous seal, with deep, dark,
soulful eyes; the creature that, legend has it, by shedding its skin, takes on
human female form, sometimes to live on the shores of the ocean, sometimes to
mate and marry with men, infuses the fabric of this story. Mary Heaney may have
been one such. Mary’s story is ancient, the death of Nora’s sister is not.
Five years after
the murder of her sister, Nora Gavin has returned to her home in Saint Paul, to
take up once again the scattering of evidence in a last desperate attempt to
prove that her manipulative brother-in-law Peter Hallett, is somehow
responsible for the bludgeoning murder of her sister, Triona. It happened
somewhere along the shores of the
Mississippi river. There are endless complications both of the evidentiary kind
and of the heart. Nora is convinced of the man’s guilt, but the more she learns,
the more the evidence points away from Peter.
As the story
progresses, Nora finds herself in a race to protect her niece and solve the
case before the man leaves the country with his new bride. Meanwhile, in Ireland,
Nora’s lover, Cormac Maguire, follows the case of the missing Mary Heaney, with
its surprising parallels to that of Triona. As both stories draw to a tense and
surprising conclusion on the rocky ocean shores of County Donegal, and the cold
Irish Sea, “The night is dark and the wind is ill/ The Plough can be seen high
in the sky/ But on top of the waves and by the mouth of the sea/ We give you
Mary Heaney who has swum across the Erne.”
