The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan is a debut novel set in Galway, Ireland. I was sent a copy of this book for review by HarperCollins Australia and it sat in my to be read pile for a while. When I finally picked it up, I was instantly hooked by the writing and expert plotting. The Ruin very much reads like it should be book ten from a well-established author instead of a debut. I read mostly crime thrillers rather than police procedural novels, but I’ve read enough of this genre to know that this is a high quality example.
The Ruin has been compared to the bestselling The Dry (probably because Dervla and Jane Harper both live in Australia) but I think it’s very different from The Dry.
