Books with John Maytham
Afternoon Drive with John Maytham · 17 July 2026 · 7m
Speaker 1: I don't leave myself much time for books, do I. But anyway I reconnected with Speaker 1: a detective series set in the Irish town of Galway. I had read the first Speaker 1: two in the series of four, but I hadn't read them for a while, and Speaker 1: I reread them in the last month and then read the two that I hadn't Speaker 1: read. They called The Ruin, The Scholar, The Good Turn and The Unquiet Grave, and Speaker 1: they're written by an Irish lawyer turned novelist and now lives in Australia with her Speaker 1: family, and they feature The central character is a garda called Cormack Riley, and when Speaker 1: the first book starts, he's left an elite detective unit and he has gone to Speaker 1: Galway to take up a place in the cold case unit, partly because he feels Speaker 1: he's reached the ceiling with the detective unit, and partly because his partner is a Speaker 1: very highly regarded biochemist and she's been offered a very lucrative and exciting job in Speaker 1: Galway, so he trapes along with her and doesn't much like the people he's working Speaker 1: with, and they very much don't like him, which makes his life very difficult as Speaker 1: he tries to investigate cases and find some allies, and each books takes the relationships Speaker 1: between him and the people in the station, the colleagues, the bosses, and his relationship Speaker 1: with Emma, which changes as the books go on. And there's a nice development as Speaker 1: you move through in him and his attitude towards beliezing, his attitude towards himself, his Speaker 1: attitude towards relationships, and his colleagues also develop into…
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