The Irish Inheritance By M. J. Lee

As you may have realised from my Earthly Joys & Virgin Earth book reviews, I’m a fan of historical novels. I like understanding where we come from, who our ancestors were & what they did. I’m also a fan of mysteries, I fell in love with Agatha Christie novels at an early age. As a result, I was very excited to get the chance to read The Irish Inheritance * by Martin J Lee. It’s combination of history, mystery & thriller was right up my street.

All products marked with * have been gifted to me for consideration. More information can be found in my full disclaimer.

The Irish Inheritance is the first in a line of Jayne Sinclair novels, based on the main character of Jayne Sinclair. Jayne is a police detective turned genealogical detective. I like this set up. It worked well for Agatha Christie with her novels, featuring detectives such as Miss Marple & Hercule Poirot. So far, I feel it works well for this series of books too. I like the way in which the character Jayne was introduced in this novel, without it feeling like an introduction. The character of Jayne evolved nicely as the book went on, with events revealing more of her past experiences. This felt like an organic evolution to the character, rather than something forced, just to explain her in the first novel.

While The Irish Inheritance is the first in a line of novels with the main character Jayne Sinclair, it worked well as a stand alone novel. To me, this is the best kind of first-in-a-series book. Please proceed with caution from this point onwards, there are a few potential (mild) spoilers. Jump to the second to last paragraph if you wish to avoid these.

The story is told over two time periods. The Irish Inheritance starts in Ireland, 1922. This sets the scene with the death of the British Officer John Clavell. As the book progresses, we read about the events of the Easter Rising that lead to this death. Interspersed between this narrative is that of present day, where Jayne Sinclair is investigating the parentage of adopted American business man John Hughes. Mr Hughes is facing imminent death & employs Jayne to discover the mystery of his father, a man who, apparently died seven years before the birth of his son.

I loved having the two time frames running simultaneously & that the events surrounding the Irish Civil War were told in the first person, rather than everything being from the narrative of characters in the present day. This made it feel like I was there watching events unfold. Sometimes authors don’t make this format work, but if definitely does in The Irish Inheritance.

I really enjoyed the suspense & mystery. Who is John Hughe’s real Father? How did a dead man have a child? How did a man marry the sister of a man who’s murder he was involved in? Who hired a hit man to follow & subsequently attempt to murder Jayne? How are the IRA involved (see below about my thoughts on this one).

I liked that this mystery wasn’t set up like an Agatha Christie, where you’re not supposed to be able to work out what has happened or who was involved. Except in the case of the IRA involvement, the clues are there for you to pick up on & come to a conclusion before they are revealed. While I love Agatha Christie books, it does frustrate me sometimes that every single book is virtually impossible to work out.

While I really enjoyed the story line, there were some flaws in The Irish Inheritance for me. These were mainly in the form of inconsistencies. For example, at the very end of chapter 28, a photo is being taken. The line “Michael smiled and the flash erupted, blinding them all” is written. However, at the beginning of chapter 29, it says “‘There he is, my da [sic], on the left, looking at the camera.’ Jayne recognised him immediately. The same jaunty smile was on his lips…” The character saying this line is daughter of Declan Fitzgerald, not Michael Dowling. So I believe the line should read “Fitz smiled and the flash erupted, blinding them all.” With Fitz being the nick name of Declan Fitzgerald.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only inconsistency in the book. As the story continues, Michael Dowling takes on the name of dead serviceman Charles Trichot to meet Emily Clavell, the sister of the murdered British Officer. But in chapter 42, Emily refers to him as Michael, despite not knowing his real identity until much later in the book.

I found chapters 33 & 34 a little tricky to get my head around at first. At the end of chapter 33, Jayne Sinclair is thrown from a car, but she’s thrown from the same car again at the end of chapter 34. It wasn’t clear to me that we’re hearing the same events from the point of view of each car driver until the end of the respective chapters. Was this done on purpose? It confused me as to why the second car seemed to continue to follow the first car, seemingly after Jayne was thrown from it. As a result of thinking she was no longer in the first car, I feel like I read/interpreted chapter thirty-four differently.

As I think back, we never really find out much about the reason behind the car of people who kidnap Jayne. We’re told that they are IRA protecting Declan Fitzgerald’s daughter, but that’s it. There was no explanation as to why they were doing this or why Jayne having a conversation with her would be an issue to them.

I also found that there were quite a few times that words had been joined together with out spaces, e.g. “haveyou.” This made The Irish Inheritance harder  to read with my dyslexia & Mears-Irlen Syndrome. I’m hoping that I received a pre-release version, rather than the finished article & these issues have been resolved prior to publishing. If not, I would suggest a new proof reader for subsequent novels.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed The Irish Inheritance & was able to get past the inconsistencies. I’m looking forward to reading the sequels. You can purchase a paperback copy of The Irish Inheritance from Amazon for £7.99. It’s available on KindleUnlimited for free & for 99p to buy.

Have you read The Irish Inheritance? How did you find it? Have you got any recommendations for similar novels?

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