MARKED OFF
DON CAMERON
NEW ISLAND 252 pp €13.99 e book €2.99
A killer is operating in Dublin, targeting blond women in the comfortable suburbs around Blackrock. Two are murdered in rapid succession, with the same unusual and shocking modus operandi. The Gardai are baffled. There’s nothing to link the women, the murders were well planned and there are no clues. Inspector Danny O’Neill, fighting demons from his own past, must find the killer before he strikes again. Yet lead after lead prove to be dead ends as O’Neill and his team struggle to deal with false clues, lies and corruption in the efforts to track down a troubled and evil man, one who revels in frustrating the Gardai and follows closely the detectives’ efforts to find him.
Public hysteria mounts with media revelations that the killings are linked. The killer is even given a nickname by journalists. Then, the separate gruesome murder of a junior Minister. The Minister had a past as a ladies man and as a Celtic Tiger businessman with many enemies. There are no lack of suspects and the murder appears totally separate from those of the two women. Yet the leads in this murder also dry up despite intense political pressure to solve the crime. Some are asking whether the murders could be linked, or is Dublin now stalked by two vicious killers?
When another woman is attacked pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle begin to fall into place and O’Neill realises he is confronted with an unprecedented situation. His team must delve into the seamy life of the Dublin underworld and apply wit, imagination and lateral thinking to locate their quarry as he targets another victim.
This novel won last year’s “ Get Your Book Published” competition jointly organised by RTE’s Today Show and New Island Books. It’s the first by author Don Cameron, a Dubliner who has published over forty short stories since he began writing in the mid-nineties. In an extensive interview on Writing.ie the author gives an interesting account of writing the novel, winning the competition and the process of getting it ready for publication – a process he describes as “tough, exciting, interesting, sometimes frustrating, rewarding and, above all, fun.”
15/02/15
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