Title:	Murder in an Irish Garden
	Author:	Carlene O’Connor
	Published:	February 25, 2024, Kensington Cozies
	No. of Pages:	295
	Cover Price:	$27.00 Hardcover, $13.77 Kindle

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Fans of Irish bestselling author, Carlene O’Connor will want to pick up the eleventh installment of her popular Irish Village Series, Murder in an Irish Garden. In this novel, the residents of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland are excited for the annual Gardening contest, and several serious gardeners have been chosen to compete. One of the competitors, Cassidy Ryan, grew up in Kilbane but moved away and some of the residents don’t think she should be allowed to enter the contest. She is a professional landscape designer with a bad reputation and unfortunately is murdered, sprayed with gold paint, and placed in the center of her garden as the showpiece. All of the other contests, as well as their crews are suspects. In addition, Siobhán and Macdara are having their first big argument since their recent marriage while Siobhán studies for her Detective Sergeant test, and that makes it hard to investigate the murder. In addition, all of the contestants, crews, and others connected are lying about different things, so Dara and Siobhán end up with plenty of suspects and a lack of clues.

O’Connor has a way of capturing the Irish culture in her books, and readers will feel they are actually there. She is an excellent storyteller, and this series is fun to read. The characters have Irish names, and readers will find themselves looking up pronunciations because the characters seem real and we want to pronounce their names correctly in our minds. She does an excellent job of developing the characters and they are likeable. The supporting characters are also well developed, but not always so likeable. They vary from book to book, but help to move the story along.


All told, this is a good addition to the series, and even though it is a light cozy, it has plenty of suspense and ups and downs to keep readers interested; as usual, readers won’t know who the murderer is until the dénouement at the end of the book.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.