Claire McGowan made her bones in the crime genre with a fine series of Northern Ireland-set thrillers that revolved around the forensic psychologist Paula Maguire. Her subsequent standalones – among them Let Me In (2023) and What You Did (2019) – have since established McGowan as an inventively playful novelist who manipulates and reinvigorates the genre’s conventions, and never more so than in her latest novel, The Other Couple (Thomas and Mercer, £8.99).
DS Alison Hegarty, holidaying in Tenerife with her husband Tom, is a detective with “an irrepressible urge to run towards murder and mayhem”. When a body washes up on the beach of their hotel and the Spanish police arrest British tourist Vince, the heavily pregnant Alison makes it her business to befriend Vince’s wife Beth, ostensibly to offer Beth comfort and assistance, but mainly because her detective’s antennae are twitching.
Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we also get Beth’s perspective on events, albeit Beth’s chapters are playing out two weeks ahead of Alison’s, when Beth has returned to London and is meeting with Corinna and
Continue Reading on The Irish Times
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.