Review: 'A Distant Grave' is a complex and lyrical thriller

In “A Distant Grave,” an Irish national is found shot to death on a Long Island beach

“A Distant Grave,” by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur) Homicide detective Maggie D’arcy has been hoping to heat up a cross-Atlantic romance with her sweetheart, Conor Kearney, but after a body turns up on Long Island beach, her trip to Ireland appears to be off. When the murder victim turns out to be Gabriel Treacy, a Dublin resident who had just arrived in America, however, she flies to the Emerald Isle to combine business with pleasure. As the investigation heats up, she finds scant time for the latter. The indomitable D’arcy, introduced by author Sarah Stewart Taylor last year in the critically acclaimed “Mountains Wild,” soon finds herself entangled in a case with threads that stretch from Long Island and Ireland to Italy and war-torn Afghanistan.