Dear Great Book Guru,  This Friday, Music at Sea Cliff Beach 2015 begins and I am very excited. First, I love the setting: the beautiful band shell right on the shore, the setting sun, a beach filled with enthusiastic music lovers… and then the added attraction of one of my favorite singers opening the season: Jenn Gerrity. The only thing I need now is a good book  for the rest of the weekend.  Do you have a recommendation?                          Great Fan of Music on the Beach

Dear Great Fan, I too can’t wait to hear Jenn perform Friday, and I do have a book to recommend- a fascinating historical/literary mystery set in 1840’s Dublin: THE CONVICTIONS OF JOHN DELAHUNT by Andrew Hughes.  Hughes is a social historian and archivist who became intrigued with the story of John Delahunt, a convicted murderer who was hanged before a mob of 10,000 angry Dubliners in 1842.  The novel is written in the first person voice of Delahunt, a poor young Trinity College student who became a paid informant for the brutal  secret police of the time known as “the Castle.” Hughes paints a shockingly vivid portrait of Victorian Dublin with its teeming tenements,  squalid public houses, corrupt police officials, and  perennially doomed politicians- all  presented through the eyes of the sociopath Delahunt.  The book opens as he is about to be hanged  for a horrific murder and we begin to learn of the events that led up to this moment. Recommended and, yes- highly recommended- if you are as intrigued by Irish history as I am!