‘The truth is cloaked in shadows, buried beneath layers of falsehoods and dishonesty’
– Never Look Back
[ About Never Look Back ]
Jenny loses her nineteen-year-old daughter Clara at Colbert train station in Limerick. She is holding Clara’s young baby in her arms, a baby she didn’t know existed twenty-four hours earlier. As they move along the platform, Clara simply vanishes.
Clara’s brother Nyah calls up an old college friend, Lana Bowen, who works as a private investigator, to help him find his sister. Together they trace Clara’s movements to London – but they are always one step behind, encountering more and more baffling developments along the way.
Where is Clara, what is she involved in and who is she running from?
As the pressure to find Clara increases and tension builds, Lana and Nyah are desperate, and running out of time. The trail eventually leads them back to Ireland where they uncover a web of deceit and malice. What is the deadly secret that someone wants to keep hidden? Will they find Clara before it’s too late? Will digging up the past destroy her future?
[ My Review ]
Never Look Back by Karen Fitzgibbon published May 6th with Poolbeg Press and is described as ’emotional and electrifying: a thriller that hits close to home’.
Having signed a three-book deal with Poolbeg Press in July 2023 Karen Fitzgibbon was inspired to write a series featuring Limerick-based private investigator Lana Bowen. Her debut, The World’s End, published in May 2024, with book three scheduled for 2026. Each book can be read as a standalone but, in order to fully understand Lana’s story, Karen would encourage readers to begin at the beginning.
When Lana receives a call from an old college buddy she is intrigued. Nyah’s sister Clara, nineteen years old, has disappeared, last seen with her mother Jenny at Colbert Station. Jenny was travelling with Clara, having come from Belfast where Clara had been a first year college student. Clara had surprised Jenny by having a new-born baby with her but had agreed with Jenny that going back to the family home in Limerick was an advisable move. Jenny was confused but hoped that, in time, Clara would open up and reveal all.
As Jenny manoeuvred her way around Colbert Station with the baby in her arms, she suddenly realised that Clara was no longer with them. Clara had simply vanished. Concern set in but, after a time, Jenny went home in the hope that Clara would surface, Nyan immediately returned to the family home but as the police were slow to act, Nyan called Lana for assistance.
Together they track Clara’s movements which take them to London but as the scent gets stronger, it soon becomes clear that something more sinister is at play. As Lana and Nyan dig deeper, they start to pull at a thread that leads them on a circuitous journey, eventually taking them back to Ireland where they try to unravel the truth.
I have to say I love the idea of a Limerick based series as it’s not a county I read about too often in crime fiction. A female PI is an interesting lead character and her depiction as a dependable and gritty, yet vulnerable, individual is intriguing. Relationships are nicely developed throughout the novel with many themes highlighted including dementia, family dynamics and physical abuse, all very sensitively handled by Karen Fitzgibbon. A well-paced and satisfying novel, Never Look Back is a solid read, a highly entertaining Limerick-based mystery, with more to come!
[Thank you to Poolbeg Books for a copy of Never Look Back in exchange for my honest review]
[ Bio ]
Karen Fitzgibbon is an actor/producer/director/writer/educator based in Limerick city. She has been co-writing, co-producing, acting in and directing plays and short films with community groups and professional groups for over fifteen years. She holds a licentiate in theatre studies with Trinity College London. She lives in Limerick with her family and much loved springer spaniel, Major. ‘The World’s End’ is the first in a series of novels, introducing Private Investigator, Lana Bowen.
