The Key to Kells: A Key Murphy Thriller

Kevin Barry O’Connor | PWIN Ink. 341 pages, e-book, $0.99, ISBN 979-89867131-0-6

O’Connor’s debut is an IrishAmerican mystery spanning across the globe and into the past led by Philadelphia resident Cián (Key) Murphy who has an uncanny genetic mutation which allows him to see the memories of one of his Irish ancestors from circa 800 A.D. Once the visions begin, Key is thrust into a quest through the crooks of Philadelphia and Irish antiquity, via historic cemeteries, churches, and sacred land, searching for his centuries-old relative’s hiding place of a priceless Irish artifact from the Middle Ages: the Book of Kells’ missing cover, pages, and unspecified treasure.

Key gets plenty of help along the way, most notably from his childhood friend, and current police officer, Buck McCoy, as well as an anthropology professor specializing in the Irish-Jamaican diaspora Arin Murphy, who is a member of the Jamaican political elite and a distant relative (and romantic interest) of Key’s. While the story of an Irish-Catholic treasure hunt could be easily whitewashed from the perspective of the colonizers, O’Connor’s deft handling of Black characters and history related to Black soldiers in Unionist armies during the Civil War and Jamaica’s history with African enslaved people and exiled Irish folks makes The Key to Kells a novel that aptly reflects the present-day intersectional realities of America, Ireland, and Jamaica.

Key’s visions of Medieval Ireland interspersed with presentday characters and events dissolves chronological time, so lineages separated by centuries become united to work toward the fruition of a timeless quest. But these fragments and treasures are ultimately secondary to the intangible prizes begotten as a result of the search for it: unity, romance, familial love, and hope across boundaries of time, race, religion, geography, and prejudice. Some one-liners don’t land, and an erotic connection between past and present is intriguing but not fully persuasive, but the suspense is real, and readers of mystery and historical fiction will find much to enjoy in this fast-paced read.

Ancestral visions offer clues to lost fragments of The Book of Kells in this page-turning, timebending thriller.

Great for fans of Raymond Khoury’s The Last Templar, Kris Frieswick’s The Ghost Manuscript.