Love or death

Fiction: Trisha Rainsford dishes up a story of murder, intrigue and romance set deep in the Limerick countryside in The Knack of Life. A first solo novel by the author from the new Penguin Ireland stable, in the past she co-wrote a novel called Hot Property under the name Sarah O'Brien with her friend Helena Close.

The start of The Knack of Life is promising, with schoolteacher Seamus Considine mulling over the death of his friend Mattie and the loss of Jessica, his wife who has run off with an architect. Seamus is tormented by the memory of Jessica - he still sees her face every time he closes his eyes - but soon he has something else to worry about: who murdered Mattie, and why? Having witnessed the shooting late one night, he tries to piece together what happened, with plenty of help from an unlikely cast of females - Cassandra, his cousin who moves in with him and promptly falls in love with the local doctor; Chrissie, the doc's glamorous sister who has a Past and a mesmerising scar on her mouth; and Alison Chang, a solicitor from Dublin who is investigating the death of a South African tycoon in the neighbourhood. If that's not confusing enough, there's Padraig Harrison, the village smoothie who has made his money in IT, and outside whose house both Mattie and the tycoon died. Then Jessica comes back looking for her carriage clock and Seamus is totally confused. As is the reader.

A romance that thinks it's a thriller, The Knack of Life would have worked perfectly well as a story about love lost and found again. It doesn't need the murder and mayhem, and it certainly could do with a snappier denouement.

The Knack of Life by Trisha Rainsford Penguin Ireland, 369pp. £9.99

Orna Mulcahy is an Irish Times journalist