Review by Dnegrt -- The 11.05 Murders by Brian O'Hare

[Dnegrt]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The 11.05 Murders" by Brian O'Hare.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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The 11:05 Murders is a Mystery Detective Novel by Irish author Brian O'Hare and it's the second part of the Inspector Sheehan Mysteries Series.

It begins by describing a very crude but realistic rape scene. Without disclosing much about it, it hints us at a possible future significance to it. Afterwards we are introduced to the Strandtown Police Station, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and its newest member: Woman Detective Sergeant Denise Stewart. Soon she starts her first serious murder case where she gets to work alongside her new boss Chief Inspector Sheehan. At the scene of the crime they encounter a puzzling scene of a carefully crafted murder and a few clues deliberately left for them to follow on to find the possible killer, including the watch of the victim stopped at exactly 11:05. Sheenan, Stewart and the rest of the Serious Crimes team will follow up on different clues leading us to various suspects and while another similar murder occurs, they rush to solve the origins and motives behind the killer, fearing another murder will occur. We follow them to find what the connection is between the victims, the possible involvement of an ex-gangster, the role of anonymous informant and even a possible love triangle between Denise, one of her fellow Detectives and a Prosecutor she helped win a case.

I must confess that the mystery was not so mysterious to me, since I thought right away that the solution to it would not be that simple I started to notice the clues left here and there by the author since the beginning. The resolution to it was not as well crafted as it could have been and I found it to be rather lazy in parts, giving little explanation to some aspects of the mystery.

Another surprising thing to me, since I was not aware this book is part of a series, was to realize that Inspector Sheenan is supposed to be the protagonist, and not Detective Stewart. Given that she is the focus since the very beginning and is poised to be an upcoming great Detective mind she turns out to be not so good at it and ends up being a damsel in distress needed to be rescued by her very predictable love interest. The author does not build up the characters enough for me to become really invested in them, or at least enough to want to continue reading the rest of the series.

The book is well written and has no editing or grammatical errors that I noticed. It has some exciting moments and fast paced scenes that capture well the attention, particularly the last third part of the book. Other parts seemed to drag a bit to long and some scenes and dialog don't add much and could have been omitted.

I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars and I would recommend it to people who are fans of the Detective genre or someone looking for some light but entertaining mystery. This book is probably best suited for mature audiences given some of the very graphic, violent and sexual content only appropriate for adults.

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The 11.05 Murders
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[Izesicle]

That's true, there was a lot of focus on Denise more than on Sheehan who is the series Detective. I rated the novel two out of four stars.