{"id":3669,"date":"2020-06-03T07:25:26","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T14:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3669"},"modified":"2020-06-03T07:25:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T14:25:26","slug":"sarah-stewart-taylor-the-mountains-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sarah-stewart-taylor-the-mountains-wild\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Stewart Taylor: The Mountains Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This novel will be released on June 23, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was a huge fan of Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Sweeney St. George series, published in the early 2000\u2019s.\u00a0 Sweeney was an expert on gravestone iconography, and the books were beautifully written, thoughtful mysteries.\u00a0 Stewart Taylor has been away from mystery fiction since 2006, and this return feels more polished, more pointed in its narrative drive \u2013 it\u2019s a step up.\u00a0 I\u2019ll say up front it\u2019s one of the best books I\u2019ve read this year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a total departure from the Sweeney books \u2013 the passion is there, the love of history is there, but it\u2019s more focused.\u00a0 It follows the story of Maggie D\u2019Arcy, who, as an adult, is a homicide detective on Long Island, but who, as a 20 something, lost the cousin who was like a sister to her.\u00a0 The cousin, Erin, had left the states for Ireland, and hasn\u2019t been heard from since 1993.\u00a0 There are other young women who were killed (and discovered) in the same area, and Maggie and the rest of her family are pretty sure Erin is dead, but they\u2019d like to know.<\/p>\n

As the book opens, Maggie gets a call from her uncle (Erin\u2019s father) in the middle of the night, telling her an Irish Garda had called requesting a call back.\u00a0 Maggie is the one to call and it turns out they\u2019ve found something else of Erin\u2019s \u2013 that\u2019s all that\u2019s needed for Maggie to get on a plane and head to Ireland to find out as much as she can.\u00a0 She leaves her teenage daughter, Lilly, behind in the care of her ex with a plea for them to check up on her uncle.<\/p>\n

The book alternates timelines, mostly between the time of Erin\u2019s disappearance and Maggie\u2019s first search for her, with the present and her search for Erin with the new discoveries, but it also backtracks in time to the girls\u2019 childhood together. It also turns out that another young woman is missing, and the clock is ticking.\u00a0 Stewart Taylor very effectively alternates between the solid police work Maggie is capable of in the present, to her previous, unformed 20 year old self, grieving for her mother, puzzled and saddened by her cousin\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lovely quote toward the middle of the novel: Overcome with a sense of timelessness, I feel suddenly that these twenty-three years are both in me and not in me, that I am twenty-two and forty-five, all at the same time, a mother and not a mother.\u00a0 I close my eyes and let the wind rush all around me.\u00a0 <\/em>That encapsulates Maggie\u2019s mental journey in a lovely, spiritual way.<\/p>\n

But the reader can see the journey.\u00a0 We meet the young woman, unsure of herself, of love, of her feelings, trying to find a path forward.\u00a0 Then we meet the 40 something woman, the competent professional, the one who nevertheless has a personal stake in the proceedings.\u00a0 The realization that life is complicated and messy come to most of us as we hit middle age, and Maggie is no different.<\/p>\n

This is not only a wonderful mystery, it\u2019s a pretty excellent police procedural \u2013 even if Maggie is mostly at a remove from the proceedings \u2013 and it\u2019s a truly lovely character study of Maggie and Erin.\u00a0 As the book concludes, with more finely drawn versions of both women, the result is both stunning and revelatory.\u00a0 I truly hope it\u2019s not another long 14 years before we hear from this talented author again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This novel will be released on June 23, 2020. I was a huge fan of Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Sweeney St. George series, published in the early 2000\u2019s.\u00a0 Sweeney was an expert on gravestone iconography, and the books were beautifully written, thoughtful mysteries.\u00a0 Stewart Taylor has been away from mystery fiction since 2006, and this return … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[358,355,357,100,8,356,68],"class_list":["post-3669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-dublin","tag-ireland","tag-maggie-darcy","tag-minotaur-books","tag-police","tag-sarah-stewart-taylor","tag-traditional-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3671,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}