Brutal harvest

CRIME: Blood MoneyBy Arlene Hunt Hachette Books Ireland, 352pp. £12.99 and The CourierBy Ava McCarthy HarperCollins, 500pp. £6.99

NOW THAT THE fizz has gone out of chick lit and paperbacks with pink covers no longer dominate the bestseller lists, popular fiction has tilted in the direction of crime, with Irish women writers taking on the murder and mayhem that’s the stock in trade of the genre.

Arlene Hunt is something of an old hand, as Blood Moneyis her sixth novel. It's an assured crime read centred on an upmarket plastic-surgery clinic in Dublin run by the icy Frieda Mayweather.

Shambolic PI John Quigley has been commissioned by Rose Butler to investigate her daughter’s death. The police think it’s suicide, but Rose can’t believe that her caring mother-of-two doctor daughter could have died this way, and she wants answers. Not being exactly busy, Quigley, whose personal problems include the hole left in his heart by his partner who has fled – he’s an interesting, complex character – takes on the case and uncovers an illegal organ-transplant business being run out of the clinic.

The organs come from eastern Europe, and as the nip-and-tuck business in Dublin has collapsed because of the recession, the brutal and scheming Mayweather has hit on this new lucrative income stream, and she doesn’t care how the organs are harvested.

As Quigley gets close to the truth, super-violent Pavel Sunic is on the rampage from Minsk, looking for the person responsible for the death of his beloved sister, who died when she sold her kidney in exchange for his freedom from prison.

Hunt is a skilled crime writer, able to build and sustain suspense – but never at the expense of credibility – and her dialogue zings with authenticity. The clever plot is carried by a cast of deftly drawn characters, who are all as recognisable as the Dublin locations Hunt puts them in. And there’s humour here, too, mostly in Quigley’s realisation that he’s in danger of becoming a sad, lonely loser and, if he’s not careful, a cliche of a private investigator. He’s a character worth watching out for in future.

AVA McCARTHY'S DEBUTnovel, The Insider,was a critically acclaimed corker, introducing computer-whizz PI Harry Martinez and setting her on the trail of a complex cybercrime that brought the reader into the world of big-money transactions, from the ones that take place in the IFSC to others that happen across a poker table. Harry is an expert hacker – she's a woman, gorgeous and smart – and she's fearless, so her second outing in The Courierwas greatly anticipated by this reader. It was a let-down. It's a tale of blood diamonds, how a rogue diamond house tries to keep world prices high for the gems, and a bloodstock owner in Kildare who uses the cover of international racing to get illegally mined diamonds out of South Africa.

Harry is drawn into the case when a diamond dealer in Dublin is murdered, and much of the action takes place in South Africa, where the detail of the diamond workers’ lives deadens the pace of the thriller. The plot feels over-researched, displaying its knowledge at the expense of pace, and Harry, who was such a strong character in the first novel, is somehow diluted and overwhelmed by all the detail.

The Courieris that difficult second book. McCarthy and Harry will undoubtedly come back stronger in the next: the enormous promise shown in her first crime novel won't go away.

Bernice Harrison is an Irish Timesjournalist