The Triskell Story Series

Tara Ruane - sacked from her high-flying job in Boston and experiencing a nervous breakdown - returns home to rural Ireland. What she needs is time to heal but fate has something quite different in store. Researching her grandfather’s diaries, clues lead her to stumble upon a buried megalithic tomb and a mystery centred upon a strange triple-spiral symbol - the Triskell. The discovery of the tomb, and soon afterwards a stunning treasure of Celtic gold, catapults Tara and her family to the centre of international media attention. As the site is beset by archaeologists, Celtic revivalists, heritage activists and others, Robert Grainger, an artefact security expert, is called in to protect the dig and its treasure. Troubled by disturbing hallucinatory dreams, Tara discovers a coded seventeenth-century poem. With help from Malachy, an old friend with unexpected skills and knowledge of the Celts, Tara begins to untangle the puzzle. The Triskell is an ancient Celtic device, used to read the future, which was broken up and dispersed across Europe in 1650. The Triskell, it transpires, has been a battleground between forces of good and evil down the centuries and across Celtic Europe. As the implications of these extraordinary events start to sink in, a sudden and unexpected development overturns their calculations. For Tara and Robert solving the mystery is no longer their only priority – staying alive is! House of the Dead is the first instalment of the 3-part Triskell Story, a mystery action thriller with a supernatural twist.

Recovering from a mental collapse and fearing for her sanity, Tara Ruane discovers a coded seventeenth-century poem in Ireland. The poem sets Tara on a chase across Europe for an ancient Celtic device, the Triskell, which can read the future and was broken up and dispersed in 1650 by those committed to its protection. When a friend is brutally murdered Tara realises that she is not the only one after the artefact and that she may be next on the killer’s list. Malachy, an expert in Celtic studies, helps Tara untangle the puzzle as does Andre, an academic. Shortly afterwards, unknown to Tara, the killer murders Andre and locates the English part of the Triskell at Arundel, in Sussex. Tara, accompanied by Robert Grainger, an archaeological security consultant who is personally interested in her, travels to Spain in search of the missing Spanish part of the device. After days of fruitless searching in Santiago de Compostela, she makes contact with Leandro, a Spaniard who brings her his part of the Triskell that he has inherited. A hidden power for good assists him evade the killers who have tracked Tara and Robert to Spain. Fearing for their lives, and with the body count rising, Tara and Robert head for France by car. Crossing the Pyrenees they embark on a northward journey of self-discovery that brings them face to face with the core of their own characters and the nature of good and evil. Arriving at the medieval abbey of Mont Saint-Michel they find that their pursuers are lying in wait. With the odds stacked against them, Tara and Robert venture into the narrow, crowded streets of the extraordinary fortress where a life-and-death pursuit unfolds on the ramparts of the great citadel. Helter Skelter is the second instalment of the 3-part Triskell Story, a mystery action thriller with a supernatural twist, in which stories of the historical journeys of the Triskell, and the people who safeguarded it over time, are intercut with the modern-day story.

Tara Ruane and her security adviser Robert Grainger effect a dramatic escape from the criminal gang lead by Pascal de Waverin-Looz, a rich, ruthless psychopath and Celtic revivalist, only to find themselves accused of yet another atrocity committed by Pascal. He is bent upon claiming all the parts of the Triskell, for its magical capacity to read the future. Tara and Robert are now the focus of pursuit by both Pascal and the French police. The game changes when Tara’s young niece, Aoife, is kidnapped by Pascal’s girlfriend and Tara realises she must bargain with Pascal for Aoife’s safety, even if this means her death. She turns again for help to her priest friend, Malachy. Nothing, however, seems to halt Pascal’s intention of bringing all the parts of the Triskell together to use them at Samhain, the Celtic New Year, in a bloodthirsty ritual that evokes the ancient Celtic gods. In a terrifying ordeal, the future of Europe as well as of Tara and her friends hangs in the balance as Good and Evil clash for dominance. What is Malachy’s role in the terrifying ordeal and what are the forces in human nature which dominate at last?