Mystery Light in Buried in a Bog


With a title like Buried in a Bog, a reader might expect a fast-paced murder mystery, but they won’t get it here. Sheila Connolly’s main character Maura Donovan leaves her hometown of Boston to visit Ireland after her grandmother dies stateside. Grandma, who was Maura’s primary caretaker for much of her life, had asked Maura to make the trip.

Maura has not known much of a world outside Boston, where the twenty-something worked in bars, and lead what seems a fairly sheltered life. She wasn’t particularly academic, though she is clearly smart, hasn't left Boston much, and as the novel begins we see her floundering for what to do now that grandma is gone.

Connolly has written a study of a person who has just lost everything and has nothing holding her back, wandering for a new beginning, rather than a nail-biter of a mystery. Yes, there is a body found in a bog, and Connolly connects Maura to it in ways that set Maura in new directions. 

The connections feel too convenient because they are almost impossible. The murder, the uncovering of whodunit and why, are secondary to Maura’s life trajectory. That’s also the beauty of this simple book: Maura loses her world in Boston, and ends up with a whole new one in Ireland, and there happens to be a murder along the way.  

Connolly’s writing about Ireland is picturesque and slow-paced, drawing a sharp contract for the reader between the European country and Maura’s Boston. This feels deliberate on the writer’s part, giving reason and time for Maura to fall in love with the place.

While Buried in a Bog may not be the most sophisticated mystery (or book), it gives us a cozy, occasionally exciting, place to visit for a short while, and a character we want to see happy. Thanks to one of my oldest and dearest, Jay Trepanier, for recommending it.

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