McGarr and the P.M.

In the fifth of his sixteen Peter McGarr mysteries, author Bartholomew Gill is still finding his niche. Though he is using the same police characters from the Garda Siochana in Dublin with which he began the series (in Death of an Irish Politician), he has not yet begun to concentrate on their quirky personalities, their humor, or their often hilarious interactions. In terms of his plots, he has yet to discover the charm of using strictly Irish settings and intrigue, as he does in his later novels, concentrating instead on Nazi art thefts in France during World War II and the party bureaucrats who conveyed impressionist masterpieces to Nazi collectors. When Henry Craig, a Dublin art and antiques dealer is found shot to death near his showroom, Peter McGarr and his investigators first concentrate on his business associates, his schizophrenic French wife, who may have seen the murder, and Craig's son, with whom he has had a recent fight. Soon, however, McGarr finds that Craig's own staff has some strange connections, with direct ties to the IRA. The theft of a priceless Alfred Sisley painting brings McGarr's art conservator wife Noreen into the investigation, and the war-time activities of Craig's wife and his partner, along with the paternity of her son, come into question. The mystery is complex, with the author needing to provide a good deal of background information about the Nazi Occupation of France in order to connect the plot elements. Several additional, intricate subplots keep the reader challenged with even more characters, interactions, and complications. Violence, stories of atrocities, brute force on the part of McGarr and his staff, and the suggestion that one of the Garda higher-ups is protecting IRA members keep the plot firmly focused on the sensational. None of the humor which characterizes Gill's later novels is observable here, and Noreen is included primarily as an expert on art, rather than as a humanizing factor for McGarr. Gill has obviously done considerable research on art, conservation, and Nazi history, and he incorporates it well. Since his first novels, his plots have grown more complex, and his hand seems surer as he manages his characters and juggles details. His descriptions are beautifully drawn, and his ability to recognize and promote those elements which keep the reader interested is obvious. He is still a developing novelist here, however--a very good one whose full talents finally burst forth in the eighth book in the series, Death of a Joyce Scholar. Mary Whipple