The Good Turn (Detective Cormac Reilly #3), by Dervla McTiernan
The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dervla McTiernan’s “The Good Turn” is, for me, the point where the Cormac Reilly series stops being “a case” and becomes properly his (and, to a lesser degree, Peter’s) story. Book three feels like the culmination of the internal conflicts he’s been dragging around since “The Ruin”: loyalty versus integrity, ambition versus decency, and the nagging sense that the job will always ask for more than it gives back.
It’s a page-turner in the straightforward, genre-satisfying way you want from contemporary crime fiction.
What makes “The Good Turn” stand out, though, is that the case is almost the excuse. The real investigation is internal: what Cormac will tolerate, what he’ll sacrifice, and what it costs to keep choosing the “good” option when everyone around you has a spreadsheet of compromises.
»”I don’t think you would, Emma, and I wouldn’t blame you because the truth is I wouldn’t be happy. That isn’t what I want.”«
Which brings me to the one thing that really annoyed me: the break-up with Emma. Whatever for?! It didn’t feel earned in an emotionally satisfying way, and it yanked me out of the flow at exactly the wrong moment.
I also loved seeing some long-term antagonists finally get what’s coming to them. There’s a particular pleasure in a series when the author remembers the old wounds, and then actually pays them off. McTiernan delivers on that promise more cleanly here than she did in “The Scholar”, which (for me) felt slightly more preoccupied with moving pieces into place.
Still, I closed the book with two questions that wouldn’t let go: Des – was he (partly?) in on the corruption, or merely orbiting it in that small-town way where everyone knows, but nobody says? And Moira – what are we meant to believe about her knowledge and her choices?
If “The Ruin” is the punchy introduction, and “The Scholar” is the tightening of the screws, “The Good Turn” is the emotional reckoning. It’s suspenseful, well written, and the ending is extremely satisfying; both in plot terms, and in how it finally resolves something fundamental in Cormac himself.
Four stars out of five.
