A Distant Grave

I was nervously excited for this book after how Stewart Taylor’s first effort, The Mountains Wild, came out of nowhere to land at #2 on my Best Books of 2020 list. Was that a flash in the pan? Is this going to be anywhere near as good? I’m happy to say that Sarah Stewart Taylor is for real!

Detective Maggie D’Arcy is back, and A Distant Grave picks up a few months after the end of The Mountains Wild. NOTE: while you technically could read this as a stand-alone novel, it's much better to start with The Mountains Wild. That start to the series builds the character foundations that will make this sequel make more sense.

In A Distant Grave, a man turns up dead on a beach, with no ID, but with bizarre scarring on his back. Before long, Maggie and her team are able to identify the victim as an Irish national who was visiting the U.S.; however, his co-workers and friends had no idea he had traveled to the States and have no idea what would have brought him there. As the clues start to unravel, the story bounces between Long Island, NY and Ireland as D’Arcy once again tries to put the pieces together.

While it may be a notch below The Mountains Wild, it’s a small notch, and Taylor once again satisfies with a twisty plot that keeps one guessing throughout most of the novel.