Following his well-received memoir, Far From The Land: An Irish Memoir(2010), two award-winning novellas, «Hard Truths»(2012) and Carby's Fate(2015), and the acclaimed collection of short stories, Rites of Passage: Five Irish Stories(2016), readers have come to expect masterful storytelling of a distinctive dramatic style from Thomas Rice. Complex characters, mostly underdogs, “ordinary heroes,” who show courage and resilience against the odds, keep their dignity, and live to tell the tale.

In The Sugar Loaf Mysteries & Other Stories, Rice delivers seven finely crafted tales that are at all times entertaining, with new characters and plot twists that will linger well beyond the closing lines. First, in the title story, we meet a local heroine, Kitty Cusack, whose reputation as a freedom fighter and defender of the downtrodden is bent to a craven purpose, exposing the darker side of human nature. In a lighter vein, but with human resilience on full display, we meet a school dropout with heroic aspirations who is deep-ended into the gritty realities of farming. We get invited to a “rambling house” gathering where we learn that history dies hard-if at all-as we witness a hilariously botched attempt at keeping a secret in a community that knows no such thing. In "October Winds," we are privy to a poignant exchange between a proud itinerant mother with hungry children as she begs for food from a farmer, resulting in a shocking revelation. «The Last Laugh» takes us inside a family auction where generations of hard work and family tradition are put to the gavel, an uprooting that will leave scars on all concerned.

«Dancing With The Devil” takes a detour from the Irish setting to the Canadian Northwest. The intricate plot begins with an oil rig explosion that has claimed 11 lives. A resourceful young journalist suspects foul play and his artful baiting of the suspect is as satisfying a pursuit of justice as they come.

In the final entry, «Finding the Beggarman, " father-son relations get a complex airing when we encounter a gifted young academic who panics at the news that his wife is pregnant, and flees to Dublin to find his famous, long-lost father.

From start to finish, The Sugar Loaf Mysteries & Other Stories will keep you glued to your chair, laughing and crying, sometimes both. This is one collection you will be very glad you discovered.

Thomas J. Rice