A review by fonril
Who Took Eden Mulligan? by Sharon Dempsey

3.0

When I got to the end of Who Took Eden Mulligan? by Sharon Dempsey, my thoughts on it were that it was an enjoyable read, painted a picture of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles well but it also felt abruptly finished and with questions left unanswered. My immediate reaction was that perhaps it was a first novel - that might explain why I felt still not entirely sure of the outcome of the central storyline - perhaps it was inexperience. Then I looked up the author and it's not her first novel so I don't know why it left me, the reader, with questions on what exactly had happened.

The premise of the story is this - Forensic psychologist Rose Lainey returns home to Northern Ireland for her mother’s funeral; while she is there, an old friend, Detective Inspector Danny Stowe, asks her to look into an unusual case: a bloodied and hysterical young woman, Iona Garner, runs into a police station, confessing to killing five people in a run-down cottage near Belfast city. The sentence ‘Who took Eden Mulligan?’ is graffitied onto the cottage wall, alluding to a cold case where Eden Mulligan, a mother of five, disappeared in mysterious circumstances decades previously during The Troubles.

I believe there is a follow-up book to come, which would excuse some of the unresolved storyline but not that I remain unclear of what actually happened in the cottage where the five people were attacked. Even one scene giving a run through of the events might have given me that clarity of closure.