DEATH IN IRISH ACCENTS

Limo driver Megan Malone burnishes her reputation as Dublin’s “murder driver” by brushing up against two more corpses.

The first body, which doesn’t even wait till the second sentence of Chapter 1 to tumble out of a closet at the Accents Café, is that of aspiring author Bláthnaid O’Leary, whose hard-to-pronounce first name sparks the first of many discussions about the vagaries of the Irish (or Gaelic) tongue among Megan, who's originally from Texas; her girlfriend, Jelena Nowak, who's Polish; and the members of the writers group who frequent Accents: American Stephanie Burgis, Juliet McKenna, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Bláthnaid’s friend Sadhbh Flannagan, whose first name poses challenges of its own. The most important writer on the scene, however, is Megan’s new client Claire Woodward, an improbably successful writer of historical romances who asks Orla Keegan, Megan’s grouchy boss at Leprechaun Limos, specifically for the murder driver to take her to several sites she’s scoping out for her latest bestseller. The news that the sample chapters Bláthnaid submitted to the group closely resemble material from Claire’s overdue novel raises a disconcerting question: Which of the two plagiarized from the other? Garda Síochána Det. Paul Bourke, who’s had quite enough of Megan already, is pulled off the case because of his obvious bias in favor of his girlfriend, actress Niamh O’Sullivan, who was on hand for Bláthnaid’s final appearance. The juiciest complication, however, arises when Kiki Rogers, Claire’s imperious agent, announces that Claire plans a new series based on Megan’s viral habit of stumbling over corpses and that there’s nothing Megan can do to stop her. A pub crawl that goes seriously awry demonstrates just how wrong Kiki is.

As lighthearted and intense as a video game set in scenic Ireland.