Death at Christy Burke's

When spray-painted graffiti appears on the wall of Christy Burke's pub indicating that there's a killer on the premises, his grandson, Father Brennan Burke, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Though not at all keen on probing into the lives of the bar's clientele, he has little choice once a body is found on the property. Issuing orders from a cell in Mountjoy Prison, the pub's current owner wants the problem solved without the police anywhere near his building. Assisted by his pal Monty Collins and fellow priest Michael O'Flaherty, Brennan begins to uncover dark secrets worth killing for in the lives of the pub regulars. In addition to the events surrounding the pub, Brennan's murder investigation becomes overshadowed by ominous events in Belfast that may soon come home to roost in Dublin. Sinister figures are spotted in and around the pub, people are being followed in the street, and Brennan comes to possess explosive information that he cannot reveal to security forces. The situation compels him to take a hard look at Irish history and his family's place in it, and he can't shake the feeling that an act of violence in Northern Ireland is about to be avenged soon-and very close to home.

Anne Emery is a graduate of Dalhousie Law School who has worked as a lawyer, a legal affairs reporter, and a researcher. She is the author of Barrington Street Blues, Cecilian Vespers, Children in the Morning, Obit, and Sign of the Cross, winner of the 2006 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"This fifth Monty Collins book by Halifax lawyer Emery is the best of the series. It has a solid plot, good characters and a very strange child who has visions." -Globe and Mail on Children in the Morning

"By having Normie tell the story, Arthur Ellis Award-winning Emery allows readers to walk beside the girl as she deals with her second sight, the abuse of other children, and the anguish she feels when the peace of her home life is threatened. Not since Robert K. Tannenbaum's Lucy Karp, a young woman who talks with saints, have we seen a more poignant rendering of a female child with unusual powers." -Library Journal, starred review, on Children in the Morning