The Unquiet Grave (Detective Cormac Reilly #4), by Dervla McTiernan

The Unquiet Grave by Dervla McTiernan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There is a lot here that ought to work for me: a body lifted from a bog, the unsettling suggestion of ritual, and Cormac Reilly caught between a high-pressure investigation and a personal call for help. Dervla McTiernan still writes with that clean, brisk confidence that makes her Cormac books so readable, and, on a scene-by-scene level, I rarely felt bored.

That slightly acid note of humour is something I usually enjoy in these novels, and it is here, too, tucked into conversations and reactions rather than delivered as showy one-liners. The problem is that the larger shape of the book never quite gels for me. The central case keeps switching gears in ways that feel more like plot-management than accumulation, and the tension leaks away whenever the narrative turns aside for threads that do not pay their weight.

The bog-body premise has a fantastic, sickly pull, and I liked how the novel toys with the reader’s expectations: archaeological curiosity, then something altogether more recent and messy. But the serial-killer-style escalation never becomes the kind of tightening noose I want from this sort of procedural. Too often, I felt I was being steered, rather than convinced, and the investigation’s turns did not always feel like the inevitable consequences of good police work.

In particular, the Emma strand landed as a distraction. I understand what it is meant to do, press on Cormac’s loyalties, and complicate his focus, but it never felt integrated into the novel’s best momentum, and I resented how often it pulled the story off the more interesting path.

Compared with police procedurals that make their procedural detail feel like texture rather than homework, this one sometimes seems to be hurrying from beat to beat, relying on escalation instead of inevitability. And compared with McTiernan’s earlier Cormac Reilly novels I have read, it left me disappointed. “The Ruin” had a rawer emotional hook, “The Scholar” felt tighter in its moral pressure, and “The Good Turn”, while not perfect, carried its internal politics with more purpose. “The Unquiet Grave” is not bad, but it feels less sure-footed, and, for a fourth entry, I wanted it to feel sharper, not looser.

What I did appreciate is that, when it commits to the human cost, families, reputations, the quiet damage that lasts longer than the headlines, it can still hit with real weight. There are moments where Cormac’s steadiness, and his wary compassion, remind me why I like him as a series lead: he notices what people are not saying, and he does not posture. I just wish the book had trusted that core more, and trimmed the parts that felt like wheel-spinning.

Three stars out of five.


Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam




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