Blood Tide by Claire McGowan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aside from one short story, this is the first time I have read Claire McGowan (courtesy of Headline and NetGalley) and, despite it being the fifth book in the Paula Maguire series, I had no difficulty in picking up the story. Maguire, a Forensic Psychologist and missing persons expert, is sent to a remote island off the west coast of Ireland to aid in the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of an English husband and wife. Bone Island resonates with Paula as this was the last place she holidayed with her parents before her mother's equally mysterious disappearance over 20 years before. Wife of a Roman Catholic RUC officer in Northern Ireland, Margaret Maguire was assumed to be among 'the disappeared', victims of IRA killings, presumed 'touts', buried in secret, but Paula has recently discovered a note left by her mother which suggests that she may have left voluntarily.

The two threads run in parallel as Paula discovers that the couple's disappearance is only the latest in a series of strange occurrences on the island while we also discover in flashback that an ex-colleague of her father's may have more knowledge of Margaret's fate than he has ever revealed. Some of the missing couple's life on the island, including some suspicions about the local seaweed processing plant, are revealed through the words of the wife, Fiona, the local GP of whom many of the islanders appear wary.

Claire McGowan is excellent at creating suspense and generating a feeling of unease. What appears initially to be a police procedural takes a left turn into almost gothic horror but never becomes unbelievable. She is also good at dialogue, realistically capturing the differences between the Northern and Southern Irish voices. My only criticism is that one or twice things are revealed to the main character and artificially withheld slightly longer from the reader to try and increase the tension - the story does not need this. Paula's messy personal life and her mother's arc are obviously series storylines and I look forward to both going back to the start of the series and finding out what happens next....

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