Old God's Time, Barry - B+

                    Recently retired as a detective for the Dublin Garda and long a widower missing his wife June, Tom Kettle sits quietly in a rental overlooking the swirling seas off Ireland's east coast sometime in the 1990's. He looks back on a life that has been filled with unimaginable pain and suffering. His former colleague and boss, Jack Fleming, shows up and asks for his help. A few days later, Tom takes the train into Dublin and heads for the precinct where he used to work. They've asked him back because they are reopening a cold case he worked on years ago involving the murder of a  pernicious rapist priest. Both Tom and his wife had been orphans, raised in the prison-like institutions run with a mean spirit by Ireland's iteration of the Catholic Church. Tom had been abused and raped by brothers; June abused by nuns, and raped by a priest for six years. Somehow, they had survived, had a loving and successful marriage, and raised two children. The priest who had raped June was the victim of the long ago murder. The priest's colleague suggests that Kettle may have been there that day in a desperate attempt to halt the justice that is headed his way for his own contemptible sins. Tom gladly submits to a DNA test that is negative.

                  This book was long listed for the Booker, an award that the author has previously won. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes. "Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." William Yeats.