Glenveagh Mystery: The Life, Work and Disappearance of Arthur Kingsley Porter
by Lucy Costigan
Merrion. 336 pages, $84.95
IMAGINE your spouse, partner, lover goes out for a walk one evening and never comes back. It could happen to anyone. The police are called, you tell them your story, and nobody is to be found. What would you do? That is the dilemma Lucy Costigan’s Glenveagh Mystery sets out to explore. She has created a page-turning historical drama replete with maps and descriptive illustrations leading readers on a treasure hunt for clues to how someone can just vanish without a trace.
We find ourselves asking the same question that prompted Costigan to research and write this book. What happened on that fateful night on Inishbofin Island when the renowned art historian/millionaire Arthur Kingsley Porter vanished without a trace? The book unfolds in a way that allows us to assume nothing.
What we learn is that Porter was born into a well-to-do family in Darien, Connecticut. He lost his mother at a young age. Subsequently, his father had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and he soon set about hiring a series of attractive young women to attend to his needs,
