A Cormac Reilly Mystery Series

From international #1 bestselling author of The Ruin and The Murder Rule comes a compulsive crime thriller set in the fiercely competitive, cutthroat world of research and academia, where the brightest minds will stop at nothing to succeed.

When Dr. Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit-and-run outside Galway University early one morning, she calls her boyfriend, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID that will put this crime at the center of a scandal–her card identifies her as Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland’s most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy–it has even funded Emma’s own ground-breaking research.

As the murder investigation twists in unexpected ways and Cormac’s running of the case comes under scrutiny from the department and his colleagues, he is forced to question himself and the beliefs that he has long held as truths. Who really is Emma? And who is Carline Darcy?

A gripping and atmospheric follow-up to The Ruin, an “expertly plotted, complex web of secrets that refuse to stay hidden” (Karen Dionne, author of The Marsh King’s Daughter), The Scholar is perfect for fans of Tana French and Flynn Berry.

FROM INTERNATIONAL #1 BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF UPCOMING NOVEL, THE MURDER RULE

“Compelling, unexpected twists and a hold-your breath standoff . . . Hand this one to readers of Tana French and to police-procedural fans.” —Booklist
  
It’s been twenty years since Detective Cormac Reilly discovered the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling home. But he’s never forgotten the two children she left behind…

When Aisling Conroy’s boyfriend Jack is found in the freezing black waters of the river Corrib in Ireland, the police tell her it was suicide. She throws herself into work, trying to forget—but Jack’s sister Maude reappears in Ireland after years abroad, determined to prove Jack was murdered.

Meanwhile, Detective Cormac Reilly, who was recently transferred to Galway from his squad in Dublin, is assigned to dig into a cold case from twenty years ago—the seeming overdose of Jack and Maude’s drug and alcohol addled mother. Other detectives are connecting Jack’s death to his mother’s, and pushing Reilly to arrest Maude, and fast. But instinct tells him something isn’t quite what it seems…

This unsettling small-town noir draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland, where corruption, desperation, and crime run rife. A gritty look at trust and betrayal where the written law isn’t the only one, The Ruin asks who will protect you when the authorities can’t—or won’t.