Critical Mick

To quote fellow crime fic fan Colman Keane, "I don’t like the-vicar-got-stabbed-in-the-study-by-the-butler."

The Four Courts Murder contains almost everything that pisses me off in the mystery genre: an implausible closed-door crime, investigated by happy, well-balanced cops, the key evidence arriving like a snake climbing up a bellrope. Plus, the author of this debut is one of those ubersuperior, outrageously overpaid jerks who sneer at normal people all day while wearing black robes and a stupid little wig.

Is? Wait- scratch that. Was.

Andrew Nugent kicked in the whole trial lawyer thing in order to serve as a missionary and then a monk. It's pretty clear, right from the start of The Four Courts Murder, that he places as little merit in the pomp and self-superiority of the Irish legal system as I do. The victim discovered with his neck snapped at ye olde start of the mystery novel- The Honorable Mr. Justice Sidney Piggott, judge of the High Court- is portrayed as a heartless, corrupt old shit. Good on ya, Nugent!

Who would want to kill Piggott- and who possibly could have? The mysterious young man spotted spying down from the high gallery? Perhaps this conspicuous earing-wearer once felt the sharp end of Piggott's justice? Inspector Denis Lennon and his clever young Sergeant, Molly Power, soon uncover that the judge was a love rat with bags of dirty cash. The investigation delves both into the world of stolen artworks (introducing a notable character, Inspector Jim Quilligan) and into Piggott's past. The killer is a cinch to spot, but The Four Courts Murder is no Last to Know where this obvious secret is supposed to come as a big surprise. Instead, the mystery charged swiftly into atypical (and always interesting) settings and situations. With playful twists, Andrew Nugent kept his story rolling forward and me guessing.

One of the novel's best scenes is an outsider's visit to a Church-run hospice for the dying. The Four Courts Murder, written by a monk, includes many scenes in rectories, boarding schools and churches. But rather than recycling the same old sins ala Benjy Blanco's Christine Falls, Nugent's novel visits these places with a candid eye, good and bad and current. The hospice- and the people encountered there- were not what the visitor expected. That touching scene was an eye-opener on Truth with a capital T, not rehash with a capital THC.

Critical Mick says: Nugent's narrative was told in a good-humoured, hopeful, and sincere voice that gradually charmed even my cranky heart. By its conclusion, The Four Courts Murder had won me over, snakes and bellropes and all. How could I, of all people, forget: the one rule is that there are no rules, it is whatever an author can make work. And I'm pleased to see that with the release of Second Burial, his follow-up novel, Andrew Nugent has turned his slightly old-fashioned, slightly updated vision of crime in Ireland into a steady job.