The Scholar A Novel

When on a late evening scientist Emma finds a young woman dead on the university premises, it looks like a hit and run without any connection to the place. But then, the police find out that she had the ID of another student with her and also wore her clothes. Carline Darcy, first presumed the victim, reacts very harshly to the police showing up at her apartment, but her behaviour makes her even more suspicious, especially since Carline comes from a very rich family owning the institute close to which the body of the still unidentified woman was found. As Cormac Reilly and his team investigate, more and more evidence pops up linking the rich girl to the murder. But also the scientist who found the victim is doubtful – wasn’t she connected to another murder just a couple of months before? And what about the fact that Emma is the leading sergeant’s partner? Dervla McTiernan’s thriller is a highly complex police investigation that I thoroughly enjoyed to read. It moves at a high pace and on every new page, new evidence appears that leads to another thread that you could follow. To fully understand to extent of the case, it takes some time and you as a reader investigate along the police all the time. The fact that sergeant Reilly himself is personally involved gives it all a bit of an extra that made the whole story even more interesting. There are two aspects in the novel that I found wonderfully elaborated. First of all, the ways dysfunctional families find their own modus operandi in which they proceed and which can never be penetrated by somebody from outside. It was mainly in a side plot that this a deeply developed, but it was also true for the protagonist’s family, just with a slight shift of interest. The second was the question of how far people are willing to go for success and recognition. These are highly valued in our times and often the main feature to define a person. If you cannot compete, you are nothing. With this attitude, to we dig our own graves in putting people under so much pressure that they cannot see a way out? All in all, very gripping and real page-turner.