Book review: Dark and emotive mystery captures the essence of small-town tragedy

Following the success of her debut novel Breaking, in which a mother deals with the fallout from losing her child on the beach while she was drinking, Amanda Cassidy returns to another thorny subject. The Returned is set against a pristine Irish backdrop, a small country town devastated by two fires six years apart and a cast of characters linked together in the aftermath.

When Detective Ally Fields is called back to her hometown, “Curro-bloody-lough, ...