The Roommate by Dervla McTiernanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Like The Sisters, this book is a prequel of sorts in the Cormac Reilly series. Niamh Turley gets in a bind when she loses her (first) roomate, and Cormac Reilly is a garda on the case (in Dublin, prior to his move to Galway). This was a free audio novella for subscribers to McTiernan's newsletter (although I accessed it through audible), and well...it suffers a bit for it. The condensed mystery novella isn't really McTiernan's strength, and once you start the Cormac Reilly series, these prequels unnecessary. The Sisters (review here) does give some backstory to a character who appears in the series proper, but The Roomate has less connection. We don't really get to care enough about the extremely naive Niamh to truly empathize, also her boss (the principal of the school where she teaches) seems to be hell-bent on making her life difficult. There are some overlapping strategies with McTiernan's novella The Wrong One, so I hope not to see that particular approach again. To give it a label (it is a common move in mystery and suspense) would be to offer a spoiler, so I won't, but it seems a bit clichéd.
It does, however, deserve kudos for the good old-fashioned "babysitter and the telephone" moment, which is delivered at the right time. I hope McTiernan sticks to full-length novels for the Reilly series, because her writing is more effective when she has the time and the space to develop both plot and characters.
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