Book Review: Sinéad Crowley - The Belladonna Maze

Marking a change for her three previous crime novels, all involving the redoubtable DS Claire Boyle, the narrative Crowley – RTÉ showbiz reporter by day, award-nominated author by early evening – employs this time out, with admirable ambition, is part historical fiction, part ghost story, part mystery thriller, and part romance.

We slip between the nineteenth century and the present day, with the action centred around the Fitzmahons in their Hollowpark country estate in Roscommon, then and now. While the current occupants might be slightly on their uppers, Crowley still paints a lovely picture for those of us who look out windows on less salubrious views. The Daft people should give her a shout when the next slump hits. The estate is centred about the mysterious maze, which can only be negotiated by keeping one eye on the tower that looms over it. ‘An old house can hold many secrets,’ says the cover blurb. You're saying there's the possibility of a few bob off the asking so?

Anyway, young Deirdre seems to be in touch with something other as the book opens in 1825, at one with a house and estate that look after its own. When her marriage later hits a serious bump in the form of a cad with his eye on the deeds, the house and Ciarán, the gardener’s son, protect her. Ciarán’s reward for this good turn? He suffers along with the rest of the country when the famine takes hold and then is on the receiving end of a boot from Deirdre’s boo-hiss cousin Paul, but he’ll probably get his comeuppance too.

Back in the modern day, Grace – who’s telling us the story, for the most part - comes to work as a nanny for Patrick Fitzmahon and his nervous wife Isla, looking after their daughter Skye, who Grace saved from drowning while the family were on holiday, so they really had to offer her something. Once settled in her new surroundings, she’s introduced to Patrick’s mother Delia, who’ll act as her guide. Maybe they’ve all been on their own too long but they scarcely let Grace’s arse get warm in the chair before they’re divulging secrets of the past. How does the disappearance of a local girl in the seventies tie into things? What’s Isla’s real story? Who is the woman Grace keeps seeing? Is she a woman at all!?! Will it all come to a head at the Halloween party, thrown for visiting yanks with open wallets?

Slowly – and the book, like the maze, might have benefited from a bit of pruning – the two periods intertwine. Although it's certainly more fun than Shuggie Bain or Lincoln In The Bardo, to name but two, The Belladonna Maze probably won't make the cut for The Booker (quite possibly a recommendation in and of itself). That being said, and despite the odd hokey lapse into Hallmark territory and an unlikely bit of Mills & Boon near the end, Crowley's novel is an enjoyable outing that’ll keep you guessing and turning pages without hurting the head too much, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.