Missing: Missing Without Trace in Ireland
Barry Cummins
Gill & Macmillan, 2003
Actual Mysteries
Last Saturday an abducted boy intruded on our summer barbeque. One guest, after a good number of tinnies, brought Philip Cairns into the conversation. "I was at school a few years ahead of him. I walked down that laneway every day. A Guarda car asked me if I had seen him, seen anything." Twenty years have passed since Philip Cairns' schoolbag- the only trace of him- was found in the laneway. These people haunt Ireland. Their memories. Their mystery- not the sort of mystery reviewed on criticalmick.com. Real life mystery that brings a dead end to conversation, and leaves partygoers to quickly finish their drinks and fetch another.
The missing is a topic that concerns the Irish public. Even with the recent years' upsurge in gang-related murder, serious crime remains shocking. If an Irish person is killed or injured- even in a car wreck while on holiday on the other side of the world- national news is made. Jo Jo Dullard and Annie Carrick, who vanished in Dublin and Kildare- are household names. Missing persons are explored in the fiction of Alex Barclay and the theatre of John McKenna.
Thousands temporarily go missing each year, but by years' end only a handful remain unaccounted for. Journalist Barry Cummins reviews the cases of Ireland's seven most high-profile cases. In nine chapters, Missing: Missing Without Trace in Ireland presents the fact about who each victim was, their circumstances, the conditions when and where they were last seen. Interviews with investigators and family members- still baffled and begrieved, decades later- reveal insights into the victims' personalities and the opinions and hopes that live on.
Thank God that Barry Cummins is a journalist of integrity. The tone throughout Missing is respectful, not tabloid. One victim- whose identity commonly appears in news items- is left unnamed in this book at the request of her family. Rich in detail, human in approach, Missing is a solid true crime read.
If there is a complaint that can be levelled against the book, from a strictly readerly view, it is that it is repetitious: missing woman, dead-end investigation, necessity for discovery of the body, and plea for the formation of a national missing persons unit in the Gardai. That has more to say about the state of affairs and the fact that these women's killers are likely still at large than it does about the book's writing.
Critical Mick says: Missing highlights an important topic, and does so tastefully.
More information can be found on Father Aquinas Duffy's Missing Irish People website - www.missing.ws
The black border around this page is there out of respect.
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