This is the 4th in Martina Murphy's Irish series featuring the flawed but experienced DS Lucy Golden and her cop partner, Dan Brown, but it is my first, not a issue as you are given information about previous events and people. It is set in Achill Island, off the coast of County Mayo, Lucy has had ups and downs in her career, which has had her demoted, but she is so dogged and determined that she has a great reputation for solving cases. Here she needs all of her acumen and skills in the most macabre of cases, a house fire, arson, in which a young child, Ella, has died, her younger brother, Bren, is rescued, but the mother, artist Moira Delaney has disappeared, is she responsible or has something terrible happened to her?

There are housecalls, calls for information and witnesses, and potential suspects, chief among them the estranged husband, whom as they dig deeper, they uncover is a confident and sinister man, a control freak, abusive, a man who had severely strict rules that Moira was forced to abide by, including what she could wear, no friends, handing over money earned by her art, effectively isolating her in the remote farm. He was an angry man, outraged that Moira had left with the children, he was definitely not going to make her life easier, but is he a merciless killer? There are others of interest, such as Moira's gangster father, the owner of the home rented by Moira, and Pattie, the sister of the husband. Then Moira's body is discovered just in time, before it is burned, thanks to Lucy's intuition.

In a busy and suspenseful narrative, Lucy and the police team come across secrets, and so much more besides, but there are the personal lives of the characters too. There is Lucy's inquisitive and interfering mother, plus a teetering relationship with her son, Luc, who has been left his convicted fraudster of a father's possessions after he died as a 'hero', including a laptop which particularly worries her, what damning information might it hold? This is a chillingly dark and engaging crime read, with a memorable central protagonist, that will likely appeal to many who enjoy the crime and mystery genre. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Constable for my copy of The Bone Fire by Martina Murphy.
DS Lucy Golden is one of the first on the scene to an arson attack, with one dead and one missing the heat is on to find both the missing woman Moira Delaney and the perpetrator.
Things get tougher when it's revealed that Moira's father is a gangland figure suspected of three murders.
I was instantly captured by the book and stayed like that all the way to the conclusion.
A great story with good characterisation.
It is the fourth book in the series but it works well as a stand alone, I hadn't read any of the earlier ones.
I would buy the next book in the series.

This is another gritty, excellent read in the DS Lucy Golden series, Set in Ireland. It gripped me right from the start with it's excellent characterisation and emotional plotting. I could empathise with Lucy, she is very relatable and completely dedicated to finding justice for a woman and her child found dead in horrific circumstances. The descriptive passages pull you right in to Achill island and I found myself transposed right there. The author has produced another riveting read which fans will enjoy. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

This is the fourth in DS Lucy Golden mysteries and it’s a good’un. It’s not imperative you’ve read the other three but it will help in understanding why Lucy’s a ball of nerves and why her only child is doing whatever he can to ignore her. But there’s a case to solve – involving a gruesome fire in a holiday let, leaving one dead and another missing. As the case intensifies, Lucy knows she’s got precious little time to investigate and find a culprit… let’s just say there are outside forces willing to use their own means of justice to find who did it. It’s an upsetting case, but handled well in print with the ups and downs of family life beautifully written.