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deepwinterodd 's review for:
The Vanishing Triangle
by Claire McGowan
I am a big fan of this author's crime novels. But rehashing unsolved real-world murders while making wild stabs in the dark (aha, aha) at who might have done them, without anything so useful as a bibliography, works cited, or even basic statistics to back up your theories is not functional reporting.
McGowan cites Michelle McNamara's book as an inspiration for this one, and while they both lay out the facts of each case, McNamara refrains from speculating in a half-crazed and unsubstantiated manner. Not so, McGowan.
After his arrest, in 1999, there were no more disappearances. Was that just a coincidence?
He was in prison until 1995, when he got out on appeal, and died in 1998, the year of the last disappearances. That meant he wasn’t around for most of the triangle disappearances, but he was for these earlier murders. Assuming he did kill Patricia after all, did he do it again in the nineties and manage not to get caught this time?
When she was found,[gross details redacted] just like Larry Murphy had done to the woman in Carlow. Larry Murphy was in his early twenties in 1987 – could he have committed this terrible crime, or is it just coincidence again?
GIRL. COME ON.
One interesting aspect of the book for me, was that McGowan compares crime in rural Ireland more than a half dozen times by saying "at least it's not America": He strikes me as an American kind of villain, with his guns and his strength, not someone you’d find in Ireland.
Fair point, we're a full struggle right now as much as we've ever been in the last 200 years. That said, one thesis of McGowan's book is that the impoverished state of public transport in rural Ireland is also a major culprit in putting women in harm's way: Even nowadays, public transport is scarce in Ireland, with one bus an hour serving most villages and perhaps a long walk to the stop.
Reader, I live a couple miles outside the nearest village here in the States, and I can only dream of one bus an hour. We get two *per day*, weekdays only, and the walk to get to the nearest stop is three and a half miles on a highway with no shoulder. So maybe in amongst all the BUT HE COULD HAVE, IS WHAT I'M SAYING, that bit did resonate.
Then again, overall, she's aiming wide with her suppositions. Grand Canyon-wide.
Although this case seems far outside the scope of the disappearances – fourteen years before the first missing woman – it shows that killers may strike once then either never do it again, or be more careful about leaving a trail.
You don't say.
McGowan cites Michelle McNamara's book as an inspiration for this one, and while they both lay out the facts of each case, McNamara refrains from speculating in a half-crazed and unsubstantiated manner. Not so, McGowan.
After his arrest, in 1999, there were no more disappearances. Was that just a coincidence?
He was in prison until 1995, when he got out on appeal, and died in 1998, the year of the last disappearances. That meant he wasn’t around for most of the triangle disappearances, but he was for these earlier murders. Assuming he did kill Patricia after all, did he do it again in the nineties and manage not to get caught this time?
When she was found,[gross details redacted] just like Larry Murphy had done to the woman in Carlow. Larry Murphy was in his early twenties in 1987 – could he have committed this terrible crime, or is it just coincidence again?
GIRL. COME ON.
One interesting aspect of the book for me, was that McGowan compares crime in rural Ireland more than a half dozen times by saying "at least it's not America": He strikes me as an American kind of villain, with his guns and his strength, not someone you’d find in Ireland.
Fair point, we're a full struggle right now as much as we've ever been in the last 200 years. That said, one thesis of McGowan's book is that the impoverished state of public transport in rural Ireland is also a major culprit in putting women in harm's way: Even nowadays, public transport is scarce in Ireland, with one bus an hour serving most villages and perhaps a long walk to the stop.
Reader, I live a couple miles outside the nearest village here in the States, and I can only dream of one bus an hour. We get two *per day*, weekdays only, and the walk to get to the nearest stop is three and a half miles on a highway with no shoulder. So maybe in amongst all the BUT HE COULD HAVE, IS WHAT I'M SAYING, that bit did resonate.
Then again, overall, she's aiming wide with her suppositions. Grand Canyon-wide.
Although this case seems far outside the scope of the disappearances – fourteen years before the first missing woman – it shows that killers may strike once then either never do it again, or be more careful about leaving a trail.
You don't say.