Book Review: Tri by Sonia Edwards

Jon Gower

We continue our reviews of books shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award for 2026. This time we consider one of the titles in the Welsh language Fiction category.

You can vote for the People’s Choice here. 

When an old lag gets out of prison at the start of a novel you know there’s trouble in store. And when that prisoner has been locked up for a crime he never committed you can usually savour the tang of revenge in the air.

That’s certainly the case in ‘Tri,’ the concluding part of the prolific ‘n’ prizewinning Anglesey writer Sonia Edwards’ detective series which started with ‘Braw Agos’ in 2022, followed by ‘Erchwyn’ two years later. And once again much of the action hinges around Herald journalist Angharad “Angi” Kiely and charismatic private investigator Osh O’Shea, who always manages to be one step if not two ahead of his actual detective brother DCI Liam O’Shea. 

Nursing suspicions

Unlike some police procedural series the central duo take their places among a busy cast of characters including paramedics, nursing home owners and gardening ladies who have their say and nurse their suspicions. Murderers turn out to be cousins. Old affairs are dragged out into the light. While a baby lies buried in the woods at Foty Lleian. As the cover blurb suggests this is all in TV presenter and bestselling novelist Richard Osman territory, the sort of eminently readable mixture of cold cases, skullduggery in close-knot communities and retirement homes that defines his mega popular Thursday Murder Club and We Solve Murders series.

Plentiful questions

And there’s plenty to be suspicious about in ‘Tri,’ not only the brutal crime of a jeweller which led to Ronan Evans’ time behind bars. Cars are nudged off an English road notorious for its hairpin bends. There are plentiful questions about paternity and loyalty. Dodgy cops walk straight in out of central casting such as Archie Cunningham. He has a studied knack for making valuable evidence turn into thin air. Then there are pliable prison officers such as Gari Chisholm and motorbike mechanic Rich T, whose name certainly takes the biscuit. There’s also a whole underworld gang including the murderous Drako and Machiavellian Moretti who have their fingers in a lot of unsavoury pies, not least the original jewel heist it seems.

Finger of suspicion

So when people start getting systematically murdered, all of them seemingly connected with Ronan Evans’ long ago and blood-drenched crime, the finger of suspicion points studiedly in his direction. And not one, not two but three people, all bopped off within three days, so there’s something very symbolic going on.

Calling cards

But when the modus operandi in all three deaths turns out to be poisoning – a method of deadly dispatch favoured by women apparently – more suspects wander into the frame, not least those with something lethal growing in the garden. Add to that the fact that someone leaves a calling card – often, indeed a playing card – on the victim’s cadaver and you soon have enough red herrings swimming around to constitute a school of them.

Ready humour

One of the hallmarks of this series is the ready humour in play, especially in the joshing back and fore between characters. The plot moves along at a lick and the pace certainly increases at around the half way mark, although there’s still enough space for some romance, even for Ronan Evans, a man whose life isn’t just blighted by his being fitted up for a crime he never perpetrated but also because he’s seriously ill. Luckily, he manages to rekindle a relationship from the long ago past, and the events within that are certainly the most moving in a book which reserves its moments of tenderness for the right time.

Racy, funny and briskly paced, ‘Tri’ is a fitting end to the Kiely and O’Shea trilogy, although it’s not so tidily tied up at the end that there isn’t room for the series to continue and for the body count on Ynys Môn to keep on racking up and up. 

Tri by Sonia Edwards is published by Gwasg y Bwthyn and is available from all good bookshops.