Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Shameful Murder | 2015 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 2 | A Shocking Assassination | 2016 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 3 | A Shocking Assassination: A Reverend Mother Mystery Set in 1920s’ Ireland | 2016 | Cora Harrison | N/A |
| 4 | Beyond Absolution | 2017 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 5 | A Gruesome Discovery | 2018 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 6 | Death of a Novice | 2018 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 7 | Murder at the Queen’s Old Castle | 2019 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 8 | Death of a Prominent Citizen | 2020 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 9 | Murder in an Orchard Cemetery | 2021 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
| 10 | Murder in the Cathedral | 2022 | Cora Harrison | Buy |
A Shameful Murder (2015) opened the Reverend Mother Mystery series and introduced Cork under the strains of the early 1920s as a setting. The period is rich: the Irish War of Independence, the establishment of the Free State, and then the Civil War created conditions of violence and institutional disruption that give the mysteries their particular atmosphere. Against this backdrop, an elderly Dominican nun becomes an unlikely but effective investigator.
The series ran to ten novels through Murder in the Cathedral (2022), maintaining the same Cork convent setting and the same central character across an extended run. Harrison’s Reverend Mother operates through accumulated local knowledge and the authority that comes with age and position in an Irish Catholic institution, different resources from Mara’s legal status in the Burren, but similarly specific to the historical and social context.
The procedural elements of each book are embedded in the institutional world of the convent, the class system of 1920s Cork, and the political tensions of a newly independent state still finding its shape.