Mystery, death, and a body in a bog: Cork writer’s new story

CORK writer Michelle McDonagh achieved her literary dream quite late in life.

The Blarney author was researching and writing her first book, There’s Something I have To Tell You, as her 50th birthday loomed.

“I was no spring chicken! she laughs. “Just before the first Covid lockdown, I decided it was now or never.

“For so many years I neglected my writing and put family and work and everything else first,” says Michelle, a mother-of-three.

Now she has published her second work of fiction, Somebody Knows.

Like her first book, it has an intriguing plot, gripping the reader from the very start as a dramatic news story jumps out at us. Gardaí are “extremely concerned for the safety of missing Galway woman, Lucia Casey, (22), last seen leaving Galway regional Hospital last Sunday”.

We are eager to find out more about the missing woman and why she vanished.

As the plot unfolds, we learn that, as her adoptive mother lay dying, journalist Cara Joyce overhears a shocking piece of information about her origins. It connects her to an unsolved death - that of Lucia Casey, a young woman whose body is found buried in a Connemara bog nearly 3- years ago.

To this day, the mystery of Lucia’s disappearance and death remains unsolved.

Cara’s quest to find out what happened reunites her with the powerful Casey family. But as her obsession with the truth begins to take over her life, she finds herself increasingly at odds with those around her.

Somebody Knows is a page-turning story of dangerous secrets and the lengths people will go to keep them.

Who is behind Lucia’s death and what are they hiding? And what will Cara risk in the present to solve the mysteries of the past?

As a journalist and author, Michelle says: “I’ve always been fascinated by the stories behind the headlines.

“I’m fascinated by the pieces of information that drip out in the aftermath of the event and in the court inquest reports.

Only the people who live through these events really know what goes on behind closed doors.

Did she delve into the criminal mind to plot this pacey ‘rural noir’?

“I didn’t dig deep into the criminal mindset,” says Michelle. “I dug into the minds of ordinary decent people who are pushed too far.”

She has brilliantly crafted a ‘whodunnit’ full of suspense.

“Who knows what any of us would do in such a situation?” says Michelle, who has all the traits that a best-selling author possesses.

“I’m such a people-watcher!” says Michelle laughing. 

This can be quite distracting if I’m trying to work as I get caught up listening to the conversations of complete strangers.

She is naturally curious.

“My husband calls it nosiness!” says Michelle. “I call it a healthy curiosity!”

How does she retain these conversations/observations?

“On a train, for example, I like to take notes of the way people speak, particularly saying funny sayings. Even when I’m walking the dog, I’ll often stop to take a note on my phone of ideas that pop into my head.”

Her surroundings are important to her when she is writing.

“I always write at the kitchen table when the children go to school in the morning until they come home.”

Candles and coffee provide inspiration for the author.

“Very important!” says Michelle.

Michelle, who is mum to Lucy, 15, Jake, 13, and Kiana, 11. is originally from Galway and says: .“I’ve always felt a huge affinity with the place. It has to do with the sea and the sense of never feeling anonymous in Galway city.

“Galway will always be home to me. I am there in spirit. There is nowhere quite like it.”

She went back to the town she loves so well to research and write Somebody Knows.

“I went on a trip to Connemara to studio called ‘Fisherman’s Perch’, says Michelle. 

It overlooked a lake and was really beautiful.

In the book, Lucia Casey’s body is found buried in a Connemara bog nearly 30 years ago, and Michelle drew on past tragic events in Ireland when writing her latest book.

“Growing up in Ireland in the 1980s, it was impossible not to have heard the name Ann Lovett, even as a child myself I didn’t fully understand what happened to her,” Michelle says.

“I just knew it was something bad. I being in my granny’s kitchen and hearing Gay Byrne read out letters from girls like Ann, who, like Lucia and Olive in this book, and so many others, had ‘got themselves ‘into trouble’.

“I was well aware, even at the age of 12 as I was when Ann died in 1984, of the shame that surrounded the topic.

“As I wrote the book, Ann and her heartbroken sister, Patricia, who took her own life less than three months after Ann’s death, and Joanne Hayes and all the girls and women who wrote to Gay Byrne and many others who didn’t, were at the forefront of my mind.”

Somebody Knows is a riveting read - one that will keep you up all night.

Michelle was often working all night.

“It didn’t come easy,” she says. 

It was a hard slog. I had to work very hard.

Michelle’s love of reading and writing was nurtured by her father, Seamus, at a very young age.

“He nurtured my love of reading and writing. He brought myself and my sister into the lovely old library in Galway every Saturday morning as children, and often sat at the kitchen table helping me with my stories.

“He also had the house full of true crime books and murder mystery magazines which might be where the darkness of my own writing come from.”

“My new book is dedicated to my late dad, who had Alzheimer’s,” says Michelle.

The man who encouraged Michelle, and believed in her, would be very proud with the publication of his daughter’s second book.

Although Michelle says she had started to write a few books before over the years, “I found I never had the time or the headspace to finish anything.

“Just before the first Covid lockdown, I decided it was now or never.

“My 50th birthday was looming, and I decided to take a step back from journalism and prioritise my fiction writing for once.

“I enrolled on a Faber Write Your First Novel course where I learnt all about the craft of writing including most importantly for me, how to plot.”