{"id":1832,"date":"2019-04-30T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T01:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=1832"},"modified":"2019-05-29T23:09:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T12:09:47","slug":"book-review-the-scholar-dervla-mctiernan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=1832","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Scholar \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Dervla McTiernan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/dervla-mctiernan-the-scholar-cover-au.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1834\" width=\"250\" height=\"436\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can anyone truly know the law? So many crime novels are predicated on police ignoring conflicts of interest that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard of recusing themselves. <em>The Scholar, <\/em>Dervla McTiernan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second Cormac Reilly outing, appears to take the procedure out of the procedural, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a bad novel for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">DS Cormac Reilly, still a pariah at his police station, is first to a murder scene and appoints himself head of the case. Unfortunately, the key witness is his partner, Dr. Emma Sweeney, and Reilly chooses not to recuse himself. The case is overtly political, neither Reilly nor Sweeney are popular in their relatively new postings, and the corpse may not be precisely who it seems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">McTiernan is a cockeyed optimist when it comes to the law and capitalism: we can solve any crime and overturn any corruption if only we believe in ourselves. Her real weakness is that Reilly is not her strongest character, or even her strongest detective. One gets the impression that McTiernan wanted to write a novel about Carrie O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Halloran, who also featured in <em>The Ruin<\/em>, but was contractually obligated to focus on Reilly. O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Halloran is better developed than Reilly and more professional than him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet McTiernan is an equal opportunity narrator, even providing vague motivations for a shadowy character before they are killed without supplying any answers. It means that she is not confined to Reilly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s viewpoint, because he does not get up to much. <em>The Ruin <\/em>was historically his case, and <em>The Scholar <\/em>delivers the Emma backstory that was threatened earlier, but for the pure and satisfying police work, Carrie O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Halloran is a gift. Ian Rankin was able to place Siobhan on an equal \u00e2\u20ac\u201d often greater, recently \u00e2\u20ac\u201d footing with Rebus. McTiernan could do far worse than follow Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Scholar <\/em>is a crime novel that leaves its secondary case completely dangling. It is the lesser case by far, but a flip back through the book afterwards reveals that, until it is casually mentioned in the epilogue, none of its elements appear after the 54% mark. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a structural abnormality, more weird than detrimental to the overall work; it disappears when the main case becomes more convoluted than twisty. The outcome isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly unlikely, but it is farfetched. McTiernan can plot, with more than a little chicanery, and the only element that needs to be overcome \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big ask \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is the conflict of interest inherent in Reilly investigating the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Scholar <\/em>is a relatively assured work from McTiernan, who has got most of the character notes right and just enough of the crime solving down. If her third novel manages to balance the characters without any of them blatantly ignoring the rules for no real reason, she can potentially secure her place in the crime pantheon. <em>The Scholar <\/em>is definitely one step closer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can anyone truly know the law? So many crime novels are predicated on police ignoring conflicts of interest that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never heard of recusing themselves. The Scholar, Dervla McTiernan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second Cormac Reilly outing, appears to take the procedure out of the procedural, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a bad novel for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","has_thumb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/scholar-crop.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-ty","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}