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Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds searches for the missing links between a recent murder case and a series of decades-old crimes in this Irish closed-room mystery
In 1975, a baby just minutes old is taken from its devastated mother. In 2010, the gruesome corpse of a nun is found in a Dublin public park. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team are on the scene and he’s convinced the murder is linked to historical events that took place in the infamous former Magdalene Laundries, institutions for “fallen women.”
As Reynolds and his team follow the trail to an isolated convent, everything seems perfectly normal and it seems perhaps they’ve followed the wrong lead. But it soon becomes disturbingly clear that the killer is amongst them and determined to exact further vengeance for the sins of the past.
The walls in this closed-room mystery narrow in on Reynolds and his team as they race to stop another murder in With Our Blessing, bestselling author Jo Spain’s U.S. debut.
“Spain’s fully realized characters, brisk plot, and clear-eyed view of Ireland’s painful past engage readers from the start.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Spain’s The Confession (2018) was a best-seller in Ireland, and this well-crafted, riveting work is surely destined for similar success, as it deserves a wide readership in this country as well.”
— Booklist starred review
“Absolutely my comfort reading.”
— Ann Cleeves, Dagger Award-winning author of Vera & the Shetland series
“The novel is razor-sharp…The denouement is fiendishly clever, a climax in the old-fashioned Agatha Christie-esque sense…a big fat twist is lobbed into the ending like a hand grenade.”
— Sunday Independent
“Brilliant! Fast paced, well researched and sensitive. Jo Spain is a sparking new talent.”
— Irish Examiner
“In a very strong year for Irish crime-fiction debuts, Jo Spain’s With Our Blessing is among the most assured…[and] picks at the scabs of recent Irish history to reveal raw and gaping wounds.”
— Declan Burke Irish Times
“Jo Spain writes as good a procedural as you are ever likely to read.”
— Crime Review (UK)
About the Author
Jo Spain is the author of the bestselling Inspector Tom Reynolds series and several international No. 1 bestselling standalone novels. Her first book, With Our Blessing, was a finalist in the 2015 Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller.
Jo, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, writes TV screenplays full-time. Her first crime series was broadcast on RTE in 2018 and she's currently involved in a number of TV developments including adaptations of her own novels. In 2021, she co-wrote Harry Wild, starring Jane Seymour, with the Emmy award-winning David Logan (airing 2022).
Jo lives in Dublin with her husband and four young children. In her spare time (she has four children, there is no spare time really) she likes to read. Her favorite authors include Pierre Lemaitre, Jo Nesbo, Liane Moriarty, Fred Vargas and Jodi Picoult. She also watches TV obsessively.
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