Review: THE TRAP, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  This edition from Amazon on Kindle
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BPGFT141
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Transworld Digital (3 August 2023)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 372 pages

Synopsis (Amazon) 

Stranded on a dark road in the middle of the night, a young woman accepts a lift from a passing stranger. It's the nightmare scenario that every girl is warned about, and she knows the dangers all too well - but what other choice does she have?

As they drive, she alternates between fear and relief - one moment thinking he is just a good man doing a good thing, the next convinced he's a monster. But when he delivers her safely to her destination, she realizes her fears were unfounded.

And her heart sinks. Because a monster is what she's looking for.

She'll try again tomorrow night. But will the man who took her sister take the bait?

My Take:

Lucy lives in the same house as her sister's boyfriend. Her sister Nicki did not come home several months ago and there has been no trace of her. Lucy is convinced her sister is one of a number of Irish girls who have been abducted in the last three or four years, that there is a serial killer at work. Lucy cannot accept that she is never going to see Nicki again. The boyfriend Chris is convinced it is time they let go and moved on. He wants to get on with his life, and says Lucy needs to do that too.

We see the action from several points of view: Angela who works in the Missing Persons Unit; Denise a Gardai attached to a special task force searching for 3 missing women in particular; and someone who appears to be abducting women.

The story explores the motives behind setting up a special task force, why some missing women warrants searches and others don't, and we inch closer to finding out what happened. 

There are a couple of unexpected twists right at the end, that make you feel the story has started all over again.

My rating: 4.4 

I've also read

• 4.4, DISTRESS SIGNALS
  
• 4.7, THE LIAR'S GIRL
• 4.7, THE NOTHING MAN
• 4.4, REWIND  
• 4.7, 56 DAYS
• 4.4, RUN TIME

Review: RUN TIME, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book by my local library on Libby
  
• Publication date 11 Aug 2022
• Publisher Atlantic Books, Imprint Corvus
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1838951660
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1838951665
• SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS' CRIME FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 

Synopsis (Amazon)

Movie-making can be murder.

The project
Final Draft, a psychological horror, being filmed at a house deep in a forest, miles from anywhere in the wintry wilds of West Cork.

The lead
Former soap-star Adele Rafferty has stepped in to replace the original actress at the very last minute. She can't help but hope that this opportunity will be her big break - and she knows she was lucky to get it, after what happened the last time she was on a set.

The problem
Something isn't quite right about Final Draft. When the strange goings-on in the script start to happen on set too, Adele begins to fear that the real horror lies off the page... 

My Take

Adele Rafferty has reached the point when she thinks no-one will ever ask her to work in a movie again. She has decided not to waste money on an agent, because she believes her reputation, and what happened on set when she was last under contract, will precede her.

So she is really surprised by the phone call asking how quickly she can flying from LA to Ireland to begin filming in a new movie. But the cast and management that she joins in West Cork are marked by their lack of experience, despite the fact that the producer appears to have a strong reputation.

The author has attempted a very ambitious structure for the novel, with a story within a story, with events in real time mirroring events described in the script.

For most of the time Adele feels she really has no idea what is going on, or, more importantly, who is behind the events occurring. 

I found the book a challenging read. There was almost the feeling at the end of having coming out of a dark tunnel, Like Adele herself, you can't help wondering how much of "action" is stemming from Adele's own mental fragility. And yet the various threads do make sense by the end.

Rating: 4.4

I've also read

• 4.4, DISTRESS SIGNALS
  
• 4.7, THE LIAR'S GIRL
• 4.7, THE NOTHING MAN
• 4.4, REWIND  
• 4.7, 56 DAYS

Review: 56 DAYS, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  This edition made available through my local library as an e-book on Libby
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blackstone Publishing (August 17, 2021)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 312 pages 

Synopsis (Amazon)

No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead.

56 DAYS AGO

Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO

When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who—and what—he really is.

TODAY

Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime? 

My Take

I read somewhere recently that discerning readers will in the future require writers to identify their time frame as pre-pandemic or post-pandemic, but this is the first novel that I've read that uses the pandemic as a background.

Much of what happens in Dublin as Ireland goes into lockdown in the first wave of the pandemic will be familiar to you. It certainly coincides with what happened here in Australia as Covid-19 raced through our cities and the fingers of infection reached out to us. Australia closed its borders to keep us safe, we worked from home, schools closed, and we all hibernated.

There are some interesting features to this novel. Ciara and Oliver are the two main narrative voices, and while we are aware from early on that Oliver has a hidden past, Ciara's hidden past does not emerge until later on. The settings jump time frames, leaping from TODAY back into the past, and we sometimes see an event from at least two points of view.

Very well constructed.  And it raises some interesting questions, not the least the one of whether anybody really ever pays the full price for a mistake in their past.

My rating: 4.7

I've also read

• 4.4, DISTRESS SIGNALS
  
• 4.7, THE LIAR'S GIRL
• 4.7, THE NOTHING MAN
• 4.4, REWIND 

Review: REWIND, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  This edition made available by my local library as an e-book on Libby
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07N7Z1785
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Corvus; Main edition (August 22, 2019)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 370 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

From the bestselling, Edgar-nominated novelist Catherine Ryan Howard comes an explosive story about a twisted voyeur and a terrible crime ...

PLAY

Andrew, the manager of Shanamore Cottages, watches his only guest via a hidden camera in her room. One night the unthinkable happens: a shadowy figure emerges on-screen, kills her, and destroys the camera. But who is the murderer? How did they know about the camera? And how will Andrew live with himself?

PAUSE

Natalie wishes she'd stayed at home as soon as she arrives in the wintry isolation of Shanamore. There's something creepy about the manager. She wants to leave, but she can't -- not until she's found what she's looking for ...

REWIND

Psycho meets Fatal Attraction in this explosive story about a murder caught on camera. You've already missed the start. To get the full picture you must rewind the tape and play it through to the end, no matter how shocking ... 

My Take

While I found this novel very engaging reading, I must admit that I puzzled a lot over its structure and eventually gave up on trying to make sense of it. 

The final explanation of who was behind the crime and why, was in many ways "out of left field" as they say.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read

• 4.4, DISTRESS SIGNALS
  
• 4.7, THE LIAR'S GIRL
• 4.7, THE NOTHING MAN
  

Review: THE NOTHING MAN, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book on Libby through my local library
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0855N98FH
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Corvus; Main edition (6 August 2020)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 309 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man.
Now I am the woman who is going to catch him...

You've just read the opening pages of The Nothing Man, the true crime memoir Eve Black has written about her obsessive search for the man who killed her family nearly two decades ago.

Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is reading it too, and with each turn of the page his rage grows. Because Jim was - is - the Nothing Man.

The more Jim reads, the more he realises how dangerously close Eve is getting to the truth. He knows she won't give up until she finds him. He has no choice but to stop her first...

My Take

This is the 3rd of this author's stand alone novels that I have read, each very different from the last. 

Jim Doyle used to be a policeman, but has left the force and works as a security guard in a shopping centre in Cork. At the book shop he notices a new book on display, just released,  THE NOTHING MAN, by Eve Black. So Eve has written the book - it is about him - and the murder of the rest of her family twenty years earlier.

It is a very adventurously constructed novel, with the principal narratives from Jim and Evie. We start with the essay that Evie wrote in her creative writing course, a thinly disguised statement about how The Nothing Man took her family away, and her childhood when she was 12 years old. Hers was the last family The Nothing Man attacked, his fifth strike in two years. The essay established Evie as The Girl Who.

Evie is convinced that if she can work out how her family was chosen, she will be able to identify The Nothing Man. She hopes that she will be able to lure him out from his cloak of secrecy.

The book makes compelling reading.

My rating: 4.7

 I've also read

• 4.4, DISTRESS SIGNALS
  
• 4.7, THE LIAR'S GIRL

Review: THE LIAR'S GIRL, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  this edition made available by my local library as an e-book on Libby
  
• Published: 1st March 2018
• ISBN: 9781782398974
• Number Of Pages: 336

Synopsis (publisher)

Her first love confessed to five murders. But the truth was so much worse.

Dublin's notorious Canal Killer is ten years into his life sentence when the body of a young woman is fished out of the Grand Canal. Though detectives suspect a copy-cat is emulating the crimes Will Hurley confessed to as a teen, they must turn to Ireland's most prolific serial killer for help. Will admits he has the information the cops need, but will only give it to one person - the girl he was dating when he committed his horrific crimes.

Alison Smith has spent a decade building a new life. Having changed her name and moved abroad, she's confident that her shattered life in Ireland is finally behind her. But when she gets a request from Dublin imploring her to help prevent another senseless murder, she is pulled back to face the past, and the man, she's worked so hard to forget. 

My Take

Alison has had 10 years in Amsterdam trying to forget the man who was her first boyfriend, who confessed to five murders of first year college girls, including her best friend. Because Will confessed to the murders, there was never a trial. Alison has spent 10 years trying to forget him, and to forget her role in giving evidence.

But now there is someone murdering girls again: the same methods, a copycat or the real murderer? And Will has told the Gardai that he can help but he will only tell what he knows to Alison. So they turn up on her doorstep in Amsterdam, the same Gardai as 10 years ago, asking her to come back to Dublin to talk to Will. And that will mean talking to her parents too.

Despite her conviction that Will is the murderer Alison finds herself trying to find proof. And then she notices someone watching her, someone from the past. What will happen if she proves his innocence? How do you give back 10 years?

An excellent read.

My rating: 4.7

I've also read

4.4, DISTRESS SIGNALS

Review: DISTRESS SIGNALS, Catherine Ryan Howard

• 
  this edition made available as an e-book on Libby through my local library
  
• First published 2016
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1504757521
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1504757522
• An Amazon Rising Star Best Debut Novel 2016 (UK edition) and Shortlisted for the IBA Crime Novel of the Year Award 2016
  
• Amazon listing
  

Synopsis (Amazon)

The day Adam Dunne's girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads "I'm sorry--S" sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her.

Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate --and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before.

To get answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground.

My Take

Before the global pandemic, thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people took cruises all over the world, and I was amongst them.  And every year, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of those passengers went missing. In some cases the disappearances were never solved. Some cases have made headlines in Australian and international newspapers.  But my guess is that very few of the missing were meant to be somewhere else.

When Sarah goes off to Barcelona for a conference Adam Dunne accepts that she will be away for just 4 days. When she doesn't answer his phone messages he puts it down to technology failure. It is only when he finds out that he is the only one who thinks she has gone to a conference that he becomes alarmed. Work says she has called in sick, and her parents are unaware that she is away. When she is not on her scheduled return flight then Adam becomes really alarmed.

What has happened to Sarah, and the reasons behind it, takes a bit of untangling. Adam finds himself on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean with another man whose wife went missing from the same ship a year earlier. There is yet another story running in the background of this book and it is not until nearly the end of the book that the reason for it being there is revealed.

I ended the book feeling that while I thought I knew everything, there were some t's not crossed and some i's not dotted. Maybe I just wasn't reading carefully enough at that stage. Nevertheless it was an engaging read. It is a debut novel, and the praise heaped on the novels that follow it encourage me to read this author again.

My rating: 4.4 

About the Author
Catherine Ryan Howard is an internationally bestselling crime writer from Cork, Ireland. Her most recent novel, 56 Days, was an Irish no. 1 bestseller, won Crime Fiction Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and was named a best thriller of 2021 by the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Irish Times. Her previous work has been shortlisted for the Edgar Award for Best Novel, the CWA’s John Creasey New Blood and Ian Fleming Steel Daggers and Irish Crime Novel of the Year multiple times. She lives in Dublin.

Books by Catherine Ryan Howard- all stand alone novels
2016 DISTRESS SIGNALS
2018 THE LIAR'S GIRL
2019 REWIND
2020 THE NOTHING MAN
2021 56 DAYS