The Lost Traveller: A County Cork Mystery

It’s been a year and Maura Donovan is still trying to find her place in Leap. She has decided to stay and make a go of running Sullivan’s Pub with the help of Rose Sweeney, her cook-in-training, and boyfriend Mick Nolan. Everything seems to be going well, except for her bizarre tendency of tripping over bodies and stumbling into homicide investigations. This time the victim turns up in her own back yard—literally! Maura discovers a man in the ravine behind her pub. His face has been removed so that he is unidentifiable, but she is determined to find out who he is and clear herself and her pub of any connection.

I find the characters in The Lost Traveller just as appealing in as the other books in Sheila Connolly’s County Cork Mystery series, and I was very happy to see their relationships developing and intensifying for the most part. I was, however, a little dismayed to find that Maura was unaware of basic things like where they lived after living there for a year. She also doesn’t really seem to have a true direction for the pub yet, past getting music nights going and toying (still) with the idea of sorting out the kitchen. She also jumped to the conclusion rather quickly that a member of either the Irish Traveler community or an illegal immigrant could be the murderer with no real evidence pointing in that direction.

Still, as with the rest of the series, this was an enjoyable read, and I look forward to seeing what else Maura Donovan gets up to.