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#AmReading - The Doom Murders by Brian O’Hare @brianohare26

Posted on Tuesday, December 24, 2013

The Doom Murders by Brian O’Hare

Amazon

Prominent figures in Belfast are being murdered. The bodies are left naked and posed in grotesquely distorted shapes. No clues are left at the forensically immaculate crime scenes except odd theatrical props and some random numbers and letters concealed at each scene by the killer. How are the victims linked? What is the connection between these killings, the bible, and a famous mediaeval painting of The Last Judgement?
Novelist and screenwriter (Film and TV) Eugene Fournier has this to say about The Doom Murders:
A disturbingly deep and satisfying Irish novel that pretends to be just an intriguing murder mystery set in Belfast. Despite its dark topic and the gruesome series of almost medieval killings that form its backbone, The Doom Murders surprises the reader with its wonderfully warm yet constricted microcosm of police and crime scenes, victims and suspects. Everything is drawn with an acerbic pen - whether it's the city, its institutions, or the gaggle of fascinating characters that populate the novel - all are at once engaging and, at the same time, flawed….but everything is authentic and thoroughly Irish… The serial crimes are thought-provoking, the clues make sense and the motivations ring true and all is resolved in a very satisfying manner.
The Chief Inspector, Jim Sheehan, is drawn so deftly and with such genuineness, you can feel him breathing…The give-and-take at the macabre crime scenes between himself, his investigators, and the quirky state forensic pathologist are off-beat and refreshing - not to mention, oddly funny… The internal struggles of the main character are the heart of the novel. Chief Inspector Sheehan's personal journey is what sets this murder mystery apart and, in my opinion, sets it above its genre.

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