Book Review: Three Reasons for Revenge by Dervla McTiernan

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Three Reasons for Revenge by Dervla McTiernan

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: William Morrow (July 21, 2026)

Length: 327 pages

Author Information: Website

I’m always on the lookout for new-to-me authors and interesting thrillers, so Three Reasons for Revenge by Dervla McTiernan caught my attention right away. This one sounded like a mystery with some topical subjects, combining good old-fashioned police investigation with a much darker premise about the lengths someone might go to when they feel they’ve been wronged. It was a pitch that definitely had me curious, but while I ended up having a pretty good time with it, it didn’t quite blow my socks off.

The story follows Judith, a police detective who is tasked with working a sexual assault case when a young woman named Alexis Turner arrives at the station with an accusation against a prominent psychologist at her university. For Judith, the details of Alexis’s report hit particularly close to home. That’s because ten years ago, she handled a very similar case against the same man, though that investigation resulted in a tragedy that she would never forget. Marking a promise not to make the same mistake again, she is determined to dig into this psychologist’s background, leaving no stone unturned. However, before she can get very far, Alexis disappears without a trace, leaving Judith without a key witness.

Shortly afterwards, seemingly unconnected people begin receiving mysterious correspondence to their mail and inboxes. A prominent news anchor receives a video file sent anonymously that shows her husband being intimate with another woman. A single father returns home with his child to find a package waiting for him containing a handgun, with no return address on the box. A successful brand manager is horrified to discover that her private conversations are being used and twisted against her on social media by someone trying to sabotage her career. Each person appears to be targeted because there are details about their private lives they wouldn’t want anyone to know, and as Judith starts putting together the pieces of the puzzle, it’s clear that someone has chosen them all deliberately. What initially looks like a straightforward case soon turns personal, with Judith herself becoming caught in the crosshairs.

I liked that Three Reasons for Revenge takes a somewhat different route with its thriller setup. There’s a lot going on beneath the mystery, particularly when it comes to questions about personal acts of retaliation, as the title implies. While the story’s focus is on the anger that can come from feeling wronged, especially when someone believes they have been denied the justice they deserve, the revenge aspect also has a contemporary feel. For example, I found it interesting how social perceptions can be weaponized, or how technology can be used maliciously to expose secrets, manipulate sentiment, and potentially turn the entire world against a person. Enacting vengeance doesn’t necessarily have to mean physical punishment; sometimes all it takes is having control over the narrative everyone else believes.

The book also takes a surprisingly dark turn as it moves toward the final stretch, and that tone shift probably threw me off more than the ending’s actual revelations. As things grew increasingly grim, there were definitely a few moments when I thought, I can’t believe the story actually went there. Though not every development worked for me, I appreciated the fact that McTiernan didn’t play it particularly safe and was willing to take things into pretty uncomfortable territory. The darker direction also gave the last act a stronger sense of urgency, even if I wasn’t completely sold on every aspect of how we got there.

And that leads to what bugged me most about the book. Some of the investigation admittedly felt a little far-fetched, and a few plot points were simply too convenient for my liking. Maybe some of that comes down to the fact that the story takes place in Australia and law enforcement and legal systems there work very differently than what I’m familiar with, because there were many moments where characters were placed in situations that felt almost too perfectly arranged to create conflict, or circumstances would line up just right for readers to access information that might have otherwise been difficult to uncover. None of it was quite enough to pull me out of immersion completely, but I do wish certain events had been allowed to unfold a little more naturally.

Overall, Three Reasons for Revenge was a solid read featuring an intriguing take on the genre. I didn’t love everything about it, but I also never regretted picking it up. For first introduction to Dervla McTiernan, it was enough to make me curious about what else she has written, and I’ll be keeping my eye out for her next book.