Title: Some of Us Are Looking
Author: Carlene O’Connor
Series: County Kerry Mysteries.
Source: Netgalley. Received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Genre: Mystery.
Trigger Warnings: Animal cruelty, torture.
Explicit? Not in a sexy way but there are semi-graphic depictions of both animals and people being hurt.
Summary: In late summer, the Dingle peninsula is thronged with tourists drawn to County Kerry’s dark mountains and deep, lush valleys. For Irish vet Dimpna Wilde, who has returned to run her family’s practice after years away, home is a beautiful but complicated place—especially when it becomes the setting for a brutal murder . . . 

In Dimpna Wilde’s veterinary practice, an imminent meteor shower has elevated the usual gossip to include talk of shooting stars and the watch parties that are planned all over Dingle. But there are also matters nearer at hand to discuss—including the ragtag caravan of young people selling wares by the roadside, and the shocking death of Chris Henderson, an elderly local, in a hit-and-run.

Just hours before his death, Henderson had stormed into the Garda Station, complaining loudly about the caravan’s occupants causing noise and disruption. One of their members is a beautiful young woman named Brigid Sweeney, and Dimpna is shocked when Brigid later turns up at her practice, her clothing splattered in blood and an injured hare tucked into her shirt.

Brigid claims that a mysterious stranger has been trying to obtain a lucky rabbit’s foot. Dimpna is incensed at the thought of anyone mutilating animals, but there is far worse in store. On the night of the meteor shower, Dimpna finds Brigid’s body tied to a tree, her left hand severed. She has bled to death. Wrapped around her wrist is a rabbit’s foot.

Brigid had amassed plenty of admirers, and there were tangled relationships within the group. But perhaps there is something more complex than jealousy at play. The rabbit’s foot, the severed hand, the coinciding meteor shower—the deeper Dimpna and Detective Sargeant Cormac O’Brien investigate, the more ominous the signs seem to be, laced with a warning that Dimpna fears it will prove fatal to overlook.

May I gloat for a moment? I figured out who did it and for once I was right. I am NEVER write. That does not however mean that this book was easy to figure out because it definitely wasn’t.

Carlene O’Connor has done it again, and really I should not be surprised and/or shocked as she is now an author whose work I want to read all of. I have several holds with the library right now, just waiting to come back into circulation so I can get my hands on them.

She knows how to write a tangled web of a mystery without making it so confusing that you don’t know which way is up.

This book like the previous in the series will wrap you up in a sinister series of events.

The first sentence alone grabbed my attention and the rest of the book kept it as I rapidly flipped the digital pages.

The killer had a calling card, or did they?

New characters are introduced in this book that will fill you with fondness, but I wouldn’t recommend becoming too fond of them, because as with any mystery you might not be sure who’s guilty and who isn’t.

Cormac remains determined to find justice, even when he’s made his own mistakes, and Dimpa still captures my attention with her kindness toward animals, and sometimes her inability to connect with people.