According to the author biography provided, Irish Rogue is Candace McCarthy’s eighteenth book. This is a fact that astonished me. The uneven pacing and stilted dialogue would make me guess that this was a first novel, if pressed, and one that could have used the efforts of an honest critique group and an editor.

Conor McDermott is the rogue in question and he’s about as Irish sounding as the man in the soap commercials. And he’s not alone – all three of the Irish characters in the book sound like they came out of commercial casting. Here’s a snippet of dialogue taken from the book when Conor’s Irish boss asks him to take over the running of widowed Elizabeth Foley’s plantation:

Conor: “‘Tis just for a month, ya say?”
Rian and his wife Kathleen: “Aye”
Kathleen: “Put yer mind at rest…Yer job will be waiting for ya when ya return.”
Rian: “Well, Conor what do ya say? Will ya go and help our friend Lizzy?”
Conor: “Aye”
Kathleen: “Thank ya!”

Yer job? Maybe Irish speakers of English all sound like this, and that’s a big maybe, but to write it phonetically just makes them sound morahnik!

An engrossing plot would have gone a long way toward alleviating the dialogue problems, but unfortunately the interesting bits of the story are interspersed with unbelievable plotting and uneven characterization. Conor shows up at Lizzy Foley’s estate convinced that she’s a gold digging hussy. Lizzy’s husband John was a wealthy man in need of a mother for his illegitimate infant daughter, and Lizzy was working as a barmaid and raising a son on her own when the two met. Though Lizzy had always been determined to marry for love, she accepted John’s proposal of a marriage of convenience. Five years later she’s a widow, her neighbors in Kent County, Maryland are convinced she trapped John for his money, her workers are giving her problems, and she has no clue about how to run a plantation, which is why she needs Conor.

Once Conor settles in at the Foley estate and gets to know Lizzy he’s able to give up the “she’s a slut” attitude for the most part. A fortunate fact, since otherwise the characters are victim to just about every other romance cliché you can name. Lizzy is a virgin, though she worked as a barmaid, has a son, and is presumed to have used sex to capture John Foley. Conor is attracted to Lizzy, but he’s searching for his long-lost sister and can’t tell her about it because it has to do with his tortured past and dying mother. Someone is threatening Lizzy for unknown reasons and she’s an object of lust for her male business associates and neighbors.

As Conor and Lizzy grew closer some of their scenes transcended the forced dialogue and plotting. Whenever they sat down at the dinner table they were suddenly talking and acting naturally. Those scenes became less frequent once they hit the sheets and the plot became nothing more than one unnecessary misunderstanding after another. If less time had been given to the outside ( and unbelievable) forces attacking this couple perhaps the characters could have developed into people I’d want to revisit. They didn’t – and I won’t.