A Nice Place to Die
by J. Woolcott
This is a highly readable, atmospheric story set in Belfast. It begins with a dead body, a lovely young woman found on a riverbank, not long dead. Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride, sent to lead the investigation, is stunned to realize he knows her; he had a one-night stand with her six months ago. She made an impression, but they didn’t reconnect afterward. And now here she is, lying dead.
He decides not to mention his prior knowledge. It’ll just get him taken off the case. And he doesn’t know anything about her anyway.
Then another young woman, Rose McGuire, shows up at the police station to report her sister Kathleen is missing. Turns out Rose is the near-identical sister of the dead woman.
Thus begins this excellent police procedural, the first in a series featuring DS McBride, a flawed but dedicated police officer whose love life is as complicated as the crimes he’s investigating. The rest of the ensemble cast is memorable too, especially his partner DS Billy Lamont and their colleague DC Maura Dunn. Billy is married with four young children. Maura is a fiercely determined young officer on the trail of a serial date-rapist.
The story alternates between two timelines. One moves forward from the murder, with McBride and his team investigating Kathleen’s death and trying to find the killer. The other is an earlier timeline following Kathleen in the weeks prior to her death, as events take her inexorably forward toward what we know will be her violent end.
The story introduces several suspects. Could it be Kathleen’s ex-boyfriend? Her new boyfriend, the one she’s been keeping under wraps? Her landlady’s shady tough-guy sons? Someone else?
The novel is an entertaining and suspenseful read, full of fast repartee and wonderful descriptions of Northern Ireland, rounding out a many-layered plot and a satisfying ending.
Joyce Woollcott knows Northern Ireland well; she grew up there. She studied design at BCAD, University of Ulster. After moving to Canada as a young adult, she had a rewarding career as a graphic designer.
She always loved reading crime fiction, and after taking early retirement she decided to try writing a crime novel. She plunged into writing, meanwhile honing her craft at The Humber School for Writers as well as through other writing courses, along with critique groups and exchanges with other writers.
Along the way, her first two novel efforts gained recognition as unpublished manuscripts. The first, Abducted, was long-listed for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for unpublished novels in 2018.
A Nice Place to Die was her second manuscript. In 2019 it won the RWA Daphne du Maurier Award, Unpublished, for Mainstream Mystery and Suspense. As she continued revising and rewriting it, the novel was long-listed for the CWC Awards of Excellence in 2019 and 2020, and in 2021 it was short-listed for the same award.
Finally Joyce’s efforts paid off: in late 2021 she signed a two-book deal with Level Best Publishing. In September 2022 A Nice Place to Die became her first-published novel; a second in the series, Blood Relations, is scheduled for autumn 2023.
She is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers of Canada, and the Suncoast Writer’s Guild.
Joyce and her husband divide their time between homes in Toronto and Florida. They have one daughter and a new grandson.
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