Who Took Eden Mulligan? - Sharon Dempsey

There is a promising group of new Northern Irish crime writers daring now to write crime fiction that is based in the province, but some are more willing than others to tackle the thorny subject of the legacy of the Troubles and the impact they have on how crime is seen and investigated in that part of the world. And for good reason. It's still a sensitive subject and understandably, not every writer wants to look backward, preferring to focus on other contemporary issues, like domestic abuse and the treatment of women in society. Sharon Dempsey however manages in Who Took Eden Mulligan? to deal with the past from a contemporary perspective, and consider how much of the legacy of the past plays into the current day. It's brilliantly done.

Sometimes it helps to have an outside perspective to make sense of the strange ways of Northern Ireland. Not an entirely outside perspective, as even most people even in the rest of the UK don't know what to make of this place, but someone maybe born there who has moved away and come back again might be able to offer a fresh perspective. That's a nice theory anyway, unfortunately what Dr Rose Lainey comes back when she visits an old friend in Belfast is even more bizarre than she could possibly have imagined.

That's saying something for a criminal psychologist who grew up in the province in a family with ties to the Republican movement in the city, which may indeed be one of the reasons why she left, seeking escape from sectarian hatred and violence that she saw around her. Moving to university in Liverpool where she trained in criminology, falling in with another young lad from Northern Ireland studying there, Danny Stowe, she even left the name Roisin Lavery behind her.

Many years later, returning to renew acquaintance with her old friend, now PSNI officer DI Stowe, Rose Lainey is invited by Danny to inspect an unusual situation that has just arisen. She is taken to the scene of a recent crime in a small cottage in a village outside Lisburn, not the place you expect to see a bloody murder scene. Inside the cottage are three dead bodies brutally stabbed and arranged on a bed, with a fourth victim still barely alive. A fifth woman has made her way to the police station and confessed her guilt for the crime. There are however some unanswered questions and strange messages left at the murder scene. What is meant by the five old-fashioned dolls made of random parts hung on the trees outside and, perhaps more pertinently, why did someone write "Who took Eden Mulligan?" on the wall?

The reason the latter message is significant is that it relates to one of many unresolved historical cases of men and women disappearing during the times of the Troubles. Eden Mulligan was one such person who disappeared in the 1970s, leaving behind five young children. Although some tried to explain her disappearance as running out on her family, that seems unlikely, and the likelihood is that she - like many others - was taken by one of the terrorist organisations, interrogated and tortured for some perceived offence, killed and buried in an unmarked and now hard to locate bog. Danny, because of an indiscretion on a previous case, has been consigned to investigation of Historical Inquiries, a political hot potato, so he is glad of the assistance to the reaction that this reference has provoked, but he also sees it as an opportunity to get reacquainted with an old friend.

Despite the severity and strangeness of the case, Sharon Dempsey takes quite a while to let Danny and Rose really get their teeth into the investigation, but that probably realistically reflects the pace that these cases take, particularly as the only witnesses are in hospital and not in a state to describe what happened. The author uses this time to develop the backgrounds of the two police officers, what they have in common and the differences between then. That's very much worthwhile as it helps introduce context for the historical legacy of the Troubles, the personal impact it has on people and the old wounds that remain unhealed. With echoes to real historical cases of women who were abducted from their families, that brings a harsh dose of reality to the bizarre murder mystery that is atypical for Northern Ireland, and give you plenty to keep on reading.

And it's very much worth your time. Dempsey covers a surprising amount of detail about the nature of life living during the Troubles, living in a Republican enclave, highlighting the mistrust of the RUC and PSNI in communities and hinting at the influence religion and priests had over this society. Little historical references are dropped in at relevant points, establishing what is unique about crime and disappearances in this part of the world, as well as how what has happened in the past still has a major bearing on society, on individual attitudes and behaviours and how it can still come out in unexpected ways. That's not an easy task to achieve, to weave fiction and reality together into a murder-mystery, but Sharon Dempsey does it impressively and with deceptive ease.