Killarney by Nikki Mottram

Publisher's Synopsis

Child protection worker Dana Gibson arrives in the sleepy rural town of Killarney with one goal in mind: locate the whereabouts of foster child Jayden Maloney and return him to care. What she isn’t anticipating is an unexpected attraction to her colleague’s younger brother, Sean, or to become embroiled in their simmering family feud. When criminal allegations surface against a member of the local parish and a police task force discovers an increase in drug trafficking across the border, Dana is forced to consider that Jayden’s disappearance is not simply a case of a teen on the run. To complicate matters further, torrential rain causes the Condamine River to break its banks, and the town gets cut off.

As Dana continues to ask questions, tensions peak with the rising flood waters and she soon realises that the tight-knit community is not all that it seems. Long-held secrets start to unravel and loyalties are questioned, forcing Dana to make a decision about who she can trust and how much she is willing to fight for what she believes in.

My Review of Killarney by Nikki Mottram

Killarney is the second book featuring Child Protection Officer Dana Gibson following on from her exploits in Crows Nest. Set in the late 1990s, this is a small town mystery that deals heavily with social services issues.

Johnny Buckley is run down and killed by a motorbike on the main street of Killarney by a hit and run driver. No-one can identify the motorbike rider who was wearing a helmet when he ran off and disappeared.

A few days later a local teenager, Jayden, disappears from his foster home. Nobody knows whether he left of his own accord or someone abducted him. Due to the rough circumstances the family had been in, Jayden was under child protection supervision with the Department of Families. Investigating his sudden disappearance is Dana Gibson and her colleague Lachlan.

The police are already stretched to the limit thanks to the ongoing drugs task force that was investigating the trafficking problem that had started going through Killarney and surrounding towns.

So, under the pretense of searching for the missing Jayden, Dana and Lachlan start asking questions around town, questions that start with the accident before moving on to Jayden’s whereabouts. Somewhere along the line they encounter a brother who has been doing a lot of work with the local youth. This line of enquiry gets them sidetracked as Dana learns of allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards boys in the past.

In fact, there’s a great deal to take in as the search for Jayden unfolds. A burgeoning drug problem in town, a local family with widespread connections across the state, the suspected sexual assault, the hit and run accident, a flood and numerous domestic violence cases. Add to that the fact that Dana has time to become romantically involved with not one, but two of the men from the small town she’s landed in.

If only Dana wasn’t such an absolute pain in the ass. Every personal interaction she has seems to be confrontational. She has little to no rights to be asking the questions she does - she’s a Child Protection officer with a government agency, for heaven's sake - yet she expects everyone to talk to her and answer her probing questions. It just doesn’t strike me as being particularly realistic.

I also wasn’t impressed by the way she tends to judge people based on the word of a single unreliable witness. She’s not the type of advocate you’d want to be reliant on and the results are tragically unsurprising.

One area of the story I had a real problem with was a sudden flood that served to cut off the town. There had been no mention of extended periods of rain leading up to it and even the rain that was mentioned was hardly enough to be responsible for the flooding that took place in and around Killarney. It appears to have been used as an excuse to strand Dana and Lachlan in the town so that further investigation could take place. Even weirder was the extensive movement that was possible a day after the flood as Dana raced around the countryside in a mad panic with nary a mention of flooded roads or dangerous conditions. A flash flood is one thing but flash receding floodwaters? Uh uh.

For the second time in as many books, Child Protection Officer Dana Gibson ignores her regular caseload and obsesses over a single case of a missing person. Rather than allow the police to do their job she tends to cross numerous boundaries to involve herself in the case. 

I couldn’t help but think this would have worked so much better if it were a regular police procedural crime novel. The Department of Families angle just felt superfluous to the story, added nothing of interest and didn’t provide a believable (or likable) protagonist.  

2.5 stars rounded down to 2