{"id":4975,"date":"2023-06-04T07:08:49","date_gmt":"2023-06-04T14:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4975"},"modified":"2023-06-04T07:08:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-04T14:08:49","slug":"sarah-stewart-taylor-a-stolen-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sarah-stewart-taylor-a-stolen-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Stewart Taylor: A Stolen Child"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Maggie D’Arcy #4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is one of the strongest entries to date in Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Maggie D\u2019Arcy series.\u00a0 The first novel, The Mountains Wild, <\/em>follows the grown Maggie, a detective on Long Island, as she goes back to Ireland to try and discover what happened to her cousin, who went missing years before.\u00a0 She also reconnects with an old flame, and the next two books follow Maggie as she returns to Ireland on a case and tries to figure out what\u2019s next in her life.\u00a0 What\u2019s next turns out to be Maggie giving up her job on Long Island, moving in with Conor, her old flame, and taking the class to restart her career as an Irish Guard.<\/p>\n

When the novel opens, new Guard D\u2019Arcy (called by the kids on her beat \u201cAmerican Guard\u201d) and her partner are on patrol, when a bunch of kids tell them there\u2019s a duck that\u2019s fallen down a well.\u00a0 The Make Way for Ducklings<\/em><\/a> scene that follows establishes the partnership between Maggie and her fellow guard, gives a bit of a feel for the neighborhood, and sets a tone \u2013 Maggie and her fellow guard are decent officers, trying to do the right thing.<\/p>\n

When they get a call out late in their shift that something\u2019s off in an apartment they\u2019d been called to a couple days before, they discover the young woman who lived there dead, and her two year old daughter missing.\u00a0 Of course, nothing propels a story like a missing child, and what follows is an absolutely stellar, perfectly assembled police procedural.<\/p>\n

The police procedural, to me, is the modern equivalent of the traditional detective novel in its purest incarnation.\u00a0 While the techniques of police investigation are always a part of the story, as they are here, what really solves the case often turns out to be good old fashioned deductive reasoning combined with a gut instinct.\u00a0 Maggie D\u2019Arcy posses this skillset in spades.<\/p>\n

As Maggie is just a patrol cop, she\u2019s only called in on the case because the squad is shorthanded.\u00a0 Because she\u2019s worked for years as a full-fledged homicide detective, she\u2019s frustrated, but the work she\u2019s allowed to participate in finds her making some breakthroughs and it\u2019s ultimately her instinct that does help to solve the case.\u00a0 As a long time cop, her radar for liars is pretty strongly honed.<\/p>\n

The working dynamic between her and the detective she encountered in the last novel is fun (for the reader), though for the two of them it\u2019s more of a getting to know and trust the other situation.\u00a0 Brilliant move on Stewart Taylor\u2019s part to take this series back to a new origin story, something which always energizes a novel.<\/p>\n

This book has a great and well told story that propels the book in a rocket powered fashion.\u00a0 Maggie\u2019s personal life is more back burner, the investigation more front and center.\u00a0 It feels like a comfortable fit.\u00a0 The illumination of Dublin and its various neighborhoods is exceptionally well done, and I really felt like I had a bird\u2019s eye view.\u00a0 This is an excellent read, one of my favorites of the year. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

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Maggie D’Arcy #4 This is one of the strongest entries to date in Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Maggie D\u2019Arcy series.\u00a0 The first novel, The Mountains Wild, follows the grown Maggie, a detective on Long Island, as she goes back to Ireland to try and discover what happened to her cousin, who went missing years before.\u00a0 She … 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":[1179,358,357,100,8,356],"class_list":["post-4975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-stolen-child","tag-dublin","tag-maggie-darcy","tag-minotaur-books","tag-police","tag-sarah-stewart-taylor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975","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=4975"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5034,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975\/revisions\/5034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}