Thanks to Harper Collins and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I haven't read the Ruin, which is the first Cormac Reilly novel and I think it would have been better if I had. A lot of the story focussed on Cormac's relationship with his girlfriend who I understand was in the first book. Instead of feeling at all connected to her, I felt she was the only character in the book that wasn't well developed. If I had more of her history, perhaps I would have enjoyed her part a bit more.
I loved the way the characters speak - the lilt of the Galway accent is there in the writing. The other supporting characters are really well-drawn. The storyline was a little predictable and there were some parts of the plot that seemed a bit contrived and superflous, especially the inclusion of the sub-plot case which seemed like just a chance to show the empathy of the police officers involved in that investigation.
Overall though, a enjoyable read. I am keen to find out what this team do next. It's closer to 3.5 stars than 4 from me but I am rounding up.

The Scholar
By McTiernan

4 Stars

An engaging crime / murder mystery.

When Carline Darcy the heir apparent to Irish pharmaceutical giant Darcy Therapeutics, is found death on university grounds, detective Cormac are thrust into a high profile and high pressure case.

As Cormac investigates, evidence mounts that the death is linked to a Darcy laboratory and, increasingly, to his partner Dr Emma.

In a novel that twists and turns, with the characters questioning their own decisions and loyalty.

The storyline engages the reader, in its search for the truth and the identity of the of the killer.

This title has been reviewed by www.books-reviewed.weebly.com

This title was provided by Netgalley and the publisher in return for an open and honest review.

#TheScholar #NetGalley

Fabulous! Already looking forward to the next installment. The right balance of backstory and plot, with strong characters and an evocative setting.

Full review published on Booklover Book Reviews website: http://bookloverbookreviews.com/2019/05/the-scholar-by-dervla-mctiernan-cormac-reilly-2-book-review.html

This book broke my heart once, twice and more times.
Who is the criminal? Where does the real evil lurks?
I have not read the first installment in this series. but the author has done a great job of bringing the reader up to date with characters. And what characters they are. They are amazing. Even when they are evil, they are truly brilliant.
What else I liked about the author of this book? She slips in snippets that show respect to other crime writers. WELL DONE!!! RESPECT!!!
Anyhow, The Scholar has a lot of twists and turns, a lot of suspense and a lot of 'oh, no' moments.
It will make you take sides more than once. At one point I actually thought there will be no happy ending... But was there? Was there a happy ending for all? Was it all wrapped up nicely?
I'll let you make this conclusion.
A young girl was murdered. Who is guilty? Who is to blame? Who is responsible? Who is truly evil? The answer is - it does not have to be a single person...
Who is the real Scholar of the title???

Having not read the first in the series I was a little apprehensive to read this book but it was well worth it! Interesting story line and easy to follow. I will and have already recommended this book to multiple customers.

Thankyou to NetGalley, HarperCollins Australia and the author, Dervla McTiernan, for the opportunity to read a digital copy of The Scholar in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
I jumped at the chance to read this book, so was very excited to receive a copy to review.
I have to say, this book was as good as the first. The storyline was well thought out and written and the central characters were well drawn and very realistic. I was thoroughly immersed in the story and loved how descriptive the scenery was. 4.5 stars.
Well worth a read.

This is a crime thriller. Set in Ireland mostly in 2014. Detective Cormac Reilly is called to the scene of a hit and run late one evening near Galway University by his partner Emma Sweeney.
The young woman who was killed had a security card with Carline Darcy’s name, but Carline was alive and well.
Carline was working on a research paper and had access to research facilities where Emma worked.
Carline’s grandfather sponsored the University Research facilities.
As Cormac starts to investigate, he soon discovers conflict between the detectives where he works and doubt over Emma’s involvement.
The investigation centres around finding out who the young woman is and why she had Carline’s security card.
I loved the twists in the plot, the secrets and interaction between characters.

This is the second book of McTiernan's series. In the first, The Ruin, we were introduced to Detective Cormac Reilly who'd just transferred from Dublin to Galway where he was met with mostly distrust from his colleagues. In The Scholar he has finally been taken off cold cases and given some current crimes to investigate when Emma, his girlfriend, finds a body of a young girl, a victim of a particularly violent hit and run, near the laboratory where she works.

Eager to take the case, despite the obvious inappropriateness, Cormac finds himself in hot water with his superiors again when Emma goes from the person reporting the crime, to a witness and then, to a suspect.

The girl’s body is not able to be identified at first and I liked how Reilly basically had to solve the case of who it was before he even got to work on the whodunnit part.

I thought that in The Ruin, McTiernan concentrated too much on the secondary characters, especially the victim's partner, rather than focusing on Reilly. This time around there were still a couple of scenes from other characters’ point of views but it felt a little more balanced. If I was editing, I would have still probably cut the [told from a minor character's point of view] prologue though. Again, I just want more Cormac. And Carrie actually. Carrie, a fellow garda, is much more interesting than Emma. I’d found Emma quite enigmatic and a tad boring in The Ruin and after reading The Scholar, my opinion has changed only slightly.

Tom, another character from The Ruin, popped up in The Scholar in a cameo type role and I really enjoyed his inclusion. I would have been happy with less Emma and more Tom actually!

I was pleased to see that McTiernan finally expanded on the hints about Emma's background, however, and gave us the whole story. (I would have felt so cheated if we’d been kept in the dark for another book.) I thought the way Emma’s story came to light was quite natural - no big info dump towards the end of the book thankfully!

I must add that The Scholar can be read completely as a stand alone. Even though I’m referencing things from the first book, it was all explained adequately that, if you really wanted to skip The Ruin and jump right in, you could understand the plot. I would, of course, recommend reading The Ruin though; it's a good book.

I did find the amount of time that Cormac and co took to solve one particular part of the crime a little odd and frustrating. It was obvious from the get-go. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a twist to the plot but, if it was, it wasn’t very tricky.

The Irish setting is again enjoyable. McTiernan struck a nice balance here too. One good example was the scene when Cormac and his team had to liaise with the Northern Ireland police which made me blink and realise I was really reading a book set in a different country.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.

4 ½ stars out of 5

The Scholar is the second novel in the Detective Cormac Reilly series and is as good, if not even better, than The Ruin. The story is fast moving with twists that keep you guessing. I was totally enthralled! Dervla McTiernan writes succinctly and creates well developed and believable characters.
Detective Cormac Reilly is an excellent detective character with a lot of heart but also determination to discover the truth. The story is set in Calway where Cormac has relocated to with his partner Dr Emma Sweeney, a research scientist for the multi-million dollar Irish company, Darcy Therapeutics.. The death of a young women leads Cormac into an investigation that becomes linked with the granddaughter of John Darcy, Carline Darcy and the pharmaceutical research centre where Emma is working. The road becomes difficult when it becomes obvious that money and power are dominating forces working against Cormac finding the truth.
This is an excellent thriller with lots of intrigue.
Highly recommended read.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher HarperCollins Australia for a ebook copy to read and review.

Book blurb...
From the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Ruin comes a compulsive new crime thriller featuring DS Cormac Reilly.
Being brilliant has never been this dangerous ...
When Dr Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit and run outside Galway University late one evening, she calls her partner, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him.
A security card in the dead woman's pocket identifies her as Carline Darcy, a gifted student and heir apparent to Irish pharmaceutical giant Darcy Therapeutics. The multi-billion-dollar company, founded by her grandfather, has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy - it has funded Emma's own ground-breaking research. The enquiry into Carline's death promises to be high profile and high pressure.
As Cormac investigates, evidence mounts that the death is linked to a Darcy laboratory and, increasingly, to Emma herself. Cormac is sure she couldn't be involved, but as his running of the case comes under scrutiny from the department and his colleagues, he is forced to question his own objectivity. Could his loyalty to Emma have led him to overlook evidence? Has it made him a liability?

My thoughts…
Once again I was captivated by this author's plotting. The Scholar did not disappoint. That said, I was not as taken with this book as I was the first of the Detective Cormac series - The Ruin. The main reason being, I felt removed from the story. I was reading about the murders but lacking clues/hints as to the killer’s motives, etc. Until at the end, once solved, and I got it.
The research facility's work being carried out by Cormack's girlfriend, Emma, was a crucial part of the plot, but I felt this was brushed over. I wanted more detail about the research and the risks.
Second novels are always compared to the first, especially one as special as The Ruin, which remains a top read for me. The Scholar was certainly compelling and I rarely put the book down. I read every chance I got and enjoyed the story very much.
Well done. Cormac is an excellent character and I look forward to the next adventure.

4★
“Money didn’t keep you safe, she’d known that since she was a little girl. Without position, status, power, protection, what was she but just another pretty girl, floating around Cannes or Marbella?”

Carline was beautiful, rich, and smart. So smart she was working on her thesis at her grandfather’s renowned laboratory where our Emma was headhunted to work. Emma’s the girlfriend of our Cormac, handsome Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly of the Irish Garda (police) who moved from Dublin to Galway with her when she was offered the great position at the lab. She’s another smart, beautiful girl (but not rich, no).

Reilly’s been stuck following up cold cases until now, and not allowed out on active investigations. He’s treated with suspicion as an outsider and misses his old job. But when Emma stumbles across a dead body outside her lab late one night, she calls him directly, and voilá! He’s right in the middle of a very active crime scene indeed. A crime, because the girl was obviously an intentional hit-and-run victim.

Ought he be involved? After all, it’s his girlfriend who discovered the body. He explains (rationalises) that Emma’s just an innocent bystander who happened to be the first on the scene. Nothing to see here. I’m not conflicted. Someone else can please interview her and then take her out of the picture. By the way, Emma had a terrible time with violence in the past and is still shaky, so be gentle with her. (Does he sound not conflicted?)

We learn more about her violent past and then – horror of horrors – it seems Emma may have been more connected to the victim than we thought. Maybe Cormac is conflicted after all.

I like McTiernan’s characters. Her stories are about people, connections, and behaviour more than they are about time and place. Of course it’s still cold and wet – this is Ireland, after all – but this shows how Cormac’s relationship develops with the other garda and with Emma.

That’s not to say McTiernan isn’t descriptive, because she certainly is. Here is a lacklustre witness and her sister.

“Lucy Henderson opened the door to them with a baby in her arms and milk stains on her shoulder. She was a bird-like little woman. Petite and fine-boned and with a definite air of abstraction . . . The second woman looked very like Lucy, but sharper somehow, more robust, as if Lucy was an artist’s rough pencil sketch, and the second woman was the finished picture.”

Part way through the story, I was disappointed that the lovely, personable Dervla McTiernan had written such a simple mystery that I had figured it out already and was just going to watch all the pieces fall into place. Ooops. I should have known better, of course. It was quite a satisfying result.

I enjoyed Carrie, another detective sergeant, who’s carrying a heavy workload of active cases and trying to balance that with a young family. She can see how wasted Cormac’s talents are on cold cases, successful though he may be, so why can’t he take some of hers over? And I liked Peter Fisher, whom Cormac calls away from his PlayStation to assist. He turns out to be more useful and astute than Cormac or we imagine.

Cormac is not hardened, but I’d say he’s seasoned. He’s dealt with bad stuff before. Interviewing someone, he hears:

“‘I hadn’t heard that she was young. I don’t know why but that somehow makes it worse, doesn’t it?’ Cormac thought about all the houses he’d visited where Mummy or Daddy, or on one awful occasion both, hadn’t come home, and felt he couldn’t agree.”

He also knows the personal toll that is taken by the job, by guilt, and by trauma. He wonders if he could have prevented something, Emma wonders if she could have prevented something, both worry about the price their relationship may take after all is said and done. Cormac gives her his view about feeling guilty.

“‘But here’s the thing, Em. That way lies madness. That way lies a drink problem, and early retirement, and me propping up a bar somewhere with the other men and women the job has chewed up and spat out, and then what the hell good am I to anyone? You have to let it go, right? You have to do the best you can, and let the rest go. And if you’re angry, if you’re guilty, you have to shove all that into the work, into your next case, so that next time you don’t make those mistakes.’ He let out a shaky, hard laugh. ‘Maybe you make new ones, but you try.’”

Now I’m waiting for next time and the inevitable new mistakes! :)

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.

If you’d like to hear the delightful Dervla herself, I can recommend this recent “Better Reading” podcast interview. By golly, she’s been through a lot, and we’re glad she’s enjoying a sunny life in Western Australia while writing about her homeland of cold, wet Ireland.
https://omny.fm/shows/better-reading-podcast/dervla-mctiernan-1

P.S. You can enjoy this as a stand-alone. There's no crucial information or even background story that you need to know to follow the plot or the relationship.

As a follow up to her most successful ‘The Ruin’, author Dervla McTiernan delivers a sensational second story in the Cormac Reilly series. Not having read the first book, I did not feel that I missed out by not doing so. ‘The Scholar’ is a complex and captivating thriller that confirms Dervla to be a wonderful crime writer.

I raced through this book completely captivated by the murder mystery playing out before me. Dervla does provide some of the backstory to Cormac from the first book which helped in understanding some main characters. There is also a range of supporting characters that are so well presented, particularly Peter Fisher and Carrie O'Halloran who I loved and would love to learn more of in future stories.

This is a fabulous crime novel full of intrigue and corruption with a well developed plot. You will follow along with the investigation and learn of cover ups, deception and much police ‘politics’ on when to follow procedure and when to follow your instinct. The story was so well woven that not until the very end did I have an inkling of the perpetrator. The twists and turns will certainly keep you guessing and you will become most invested in well rounded and developed characters.

All up this is an addictive and fascinating journey and if you are not on the Dervla McTiernan crime train, I suggest you hop aboard for some well written thrillers.




This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.

I receieved an ARC from the publisher and Netgalley but chose to listen to the audio version of this book.
Although this is the second in the series and I read the first, I do believe it will work as a stand alone.
I really enjoyed the narration of the story and it moved at a good pace. I did have a few raised eyebrows at parts of the story line ie Comac becoming the lead on an investigation where his girlfriend was a witness?? But I decided to go with the flow on this.
All in all a good police procedural with likeable, developing characters and I’ll definately follow on with a third book if there is one.

Another solid entry into this series.
I really enjoyed The Ruin, so was happy when I managed to snag the follow up on netgalley. This book is not fast paced, but is an excellent police procedural that further develops the characters from the previous in the series.
I'm looking forward to the next installment!

The second book in the series and I think I enjoyed it even more than the first. I felt I got to know Cormac and Emma as well as the other characters much better than I did in book one. There were two cases being pursued at the start and I really enjoyed the way Cormac dealt with them, he is extremely insightful causing one fellow officer to take a disliking to him and cause him all sorts of problems. I thought at halfway that I had it all figured out, but really I only had half of it figured out as Dervla McTiernan threw all sorts of twists and turns into the mix. I look forward to reading more in this crime series.

This is the second book by McTierman featuring detective Cormac Reilly however one doesn't need to have read the first to thoroughly enjoy this one. It begins when Cormac's partner, Emma, a scientist, discovers a body on one of the roads near the laboratory where she works. Written as a crime procedural we are taken through all the steps necessary to eventually uncover the murderer. The pace is good and definitely keeps the reader engaged. However the plot seems to go awry when the killer is revealed. The motivation seemed very thin to me and stretched credibility. Otherwise it was a very good read and I will seek out McTierman's first book, The Ruin.

A compelling follow up to The Ruin, The Scholar puts Dervla McTiernan into the upper echelon of crime writers. In this latest offering DS Cormac Reilly's girlfriend, Dr Emma Sweeney, stumbles across the body of a dead girl in the carpark after leaving her university lab late one night. Cormac is the first on the scene and the girl's security ID confirms her to be Carline Darcy, granddaughter of pharmaceutical billionaire John Darcy.

All is not as it seems, however, and Cormac's investigation hauls him in several different directions at once. The trouble is, having his girlfriend Emma as the one who discovers the body, and a key witness, Cormac soon finds himself compromised, and wondering if he is biased in his findings. As the evidence against the lab, and Emma, accumulates, Cormac is second guessing himself, and then racing against time to crack this case, a case he is probably too close to and invested in.

This gem of a book had me racing through it, ignoring all else, to solve the case. I did come up with some of the answers, but definitely not all of them, and some parts had me stumped! The characters continue to be fleshed out, and we find out the backstory between Cormac and Emma. I'm definitely looking forward to the next installment of the series. Recommended to all lovers of mysteries and crime fiction.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Irish-born Aussie-dwelling Dervla McTiernan's debut novel, The Ruin, was warmly received last year, winning hearts and accolades.

Her fans will be happy to know that its sequel, The Scholar, most definitely does not disappoint and we pick up with Irish detective Cormac Reilly where we left off.

This case is a particularly interesting one. We briefly meet a 12yr old Carline upon the death of her father and I engaged with her immediately. So it was devastating that the book-proper opens with a hit and run and she's identified as the victim, eight years later.

I don't think I'm offering up huge spoilers here by saying there's a case of mistaken identity but it seems obvious that whatever's happening here, revolves around the young woman who's now wealthy-in-her-own-right, but desperate for acceptance by her patriarchal grandfather.

The biggest challenge for me (here) was that I didn't recall a lot of detail from The Ruin. I remembered the main plot but not enough about Cormac's colleagues and boss or even Emma. I re-read my review of the first book and noted that I'd commented on the lack of backstory around Emma which I hoped would be forthcoming.

This time around Cormac's worried about her fragility and there's mention of the events leading up to how the pair met and though I can't remember if they were the answers I was after in the first book or happened in the first book, I assume them to be.

I also wasn't sure if we'd met Cormac's colleagues, Carrie O'Halloran and the ambitious Peter Fisher then. Either way I enjoyed that (cop shop) story arc - about trust, loyalty and those who have your back when you least expect it.

This is an intriguing story and kinda sad when you think about what actually happened and why. Such intelligence and potential snuffed out... 'n' all that.

I know it's only book two but McTiernan is offering up consistently engaging characters and interesting plots in this already-impressive series.

A quick visit to her lab late on a Friday evening results in Dr Emma Sweeney being the first to discover the victim of an apparent hit-and-run in the middle of one of the university campus roads. Shaken, instead of calling emergency services, she calls her partner DS Cormac Reilly. Earlier that same day Superindent Murphy had agreed to shift DS Reilly off the perpetual cold caseload and onto active police work, so Cormac is determined to make this new case his own, despite Emma being a witness. He would play everything by the book, and it would be fine. But when the victim is initially misidentified, the case begins to become more challenging than he expects.

This is another great read from Dervla McTiernan, and a worthy follow-up to her debut, The Ruin. Reilly is just as strong and reliable as before, and this time we get to know a few other characters a bit better too, such as Emma of course, but also Garda Peter Fisher, Murphy and DS Carrie O'Halloran. Because the story is set firmly in central Galway, I also felt more connected to the city as a location too. While I guessed the what fairly early on in the story, I had to wait until almost the end to find out the who and the why, so it was still a very satisfying mystery.

I really hope this series continues.