With Our Blessing: An Inspector Tom Reynolds Mystery

by Jo Spain

Overview

Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds searches for the missing links between a recent murder case and a series of decades-old crimes in this Irish closed-room mystery
 
In 1975, a baby just minutes old is taken from its devastated mother. In 2010, the gruesome corpse of a nun is found in a Dublin public park. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team are on the scene and he’s convinced the murder is linked to historical events that took place in the infamous former Magdalene Laundries, institutions for “fallen women.”

As Reynolds and his team follow the trail to an isolated convent, everything seems perfectly normal and it seems perhaps they’ve followed the wrong lead. But it soon becomes disturbingly clear that the killer is amongst them and determined to exact further vengeance for the sins of the past.

The walls in this closed-room mystery narrow in on Reynolds and his team as they race to stop another murder in With Our Blessing, bestselling author Jo Spain’s U.S. debut.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683314363
Publisher:	CROOKED LANE BOOKS
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Series:	An Inspector Tom Reynolds Mystery , #1
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jo Spain is a full-time writer and screenwriter. Her first novel, With Our Blessing, was one of seven books shortlisted in the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition and her first psychological thriller. The Confession, was a number one bestseller in Ireland. Jo co-wrote the ground-breaking TV series Taken Down which first broadcast in Ireland in 2018. She’s now working on multiple European TV projects. Joanne lives in Dublin with her husband and their four young children.

Editorial Reviews

02/25/2019

Det. Insp. Tom Reynolds, the hero of this taut series launch from Spain (The Confession), and his fellow members of the Dublin Murder Squad investigate the murder of the Reverend Mother Attracta, whose mutilated body was found in a city park. Attracta was the head of a convent in the remote village of Kilcross. Now housing only a handful of nuns, the convent was once one of the notorious Magadalene Laundries. Begun as charitable refuges for indigent women, the laundries quickly became state-sanctioned dumping grounds for unwanted children rife with abuse, including black market adoptions. Before the inquiry is fully underway, Det. Laura Brennan discovers that her family has a dark connection to the convent. While a winter storm isolates Reynolds and his team, a second victim—the parish priest with sins to hide—is murdered. Reynolds, facing a crisis of his own, must accept that the killer may be closer to home than he cares to acknowledge. Spain’s fully realized characters, brisk plot, and clear-eyed view of Ireland’s painful past engage readers from the start. Agent: Nicola Barr, Bent Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for the With Our Blessing:
“Spain’s fully realized characters, brisk plot, and clear-eyed view of Ireland’s painful past engage readers from the start.”
—Publishers Weekly

"Spain’s The Confession (2018) was a best-seller in Ireland, and this well-crafted, riveting work is surely destined for similar success, as it deserves a wide readership in this country as well."
—Booklist starred review

“Absolutely my comfort reading.”
—Ann Cleeves, Dagger Award-winning author of Vera & the Shetland series

“The novel is razor-sharp...The denouement is fiendishly clever, a climax in the old-fashioned Agatha Christie-esque sense...a big fat twist is lobbed into the ending like a hand grenade.”
—Sunday Independent

“Brilliant! Fast paced, well researched and sensitive. Jo Spain is a sparking new talent.”
—Irish Examiner

“In a very strong year for Irish crime-fiction debuts, Jo Spain’s With Our Blessing is among the most assured...[and] picks at the scabs of recent Irish history to reveal raw and gaping wounds.”
—Declan Burke Irish Times

“Jo Spain writes as good a procedural as you are ever likely to read.”
—Crime Review (UK)

From the Publisher