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Three Reasons for Revenge: A Novel – A Gripping Detective Thriller Where Unconnected Lives Converge in Deadly Deception by Dervla McTiernan front cover

Three Reasons for Revenge

by Dervla McTiernan

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Best for

Readers who want an unsettling, character-led crime thriller with a psychological core, built around a revenge puzzle and a detective whose own past is part of the story.

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At a glance

Pages336
First published2026
Our age bandAdult
ISBN0063042290
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About the Author

Dervla McTiernan

1 book reviewed

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Three Reasons for Revenge

by Dervla McTiernan

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for: Readers who want an unsettling, character-led crime thriller with a psychological core, built around a revenge puzzle and a detective whose own past is part of the story.

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Three Reasons for Revenge is a revenge thriller in which Detective Sergeant Judith Lee investigates three tailored packages, each built to wreck a different life. Trade reviewers praise its craft. The caveat is a darkness some listeners found too much, and one found the opening slow.
Is it worth reading?
It delivers on its hook for most of the reviewers we found. According to BookBrowse, Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, and one Audible listener could not stop listening and was gobsmacked by the reveal.
Similar books
The sources compare it with the work of Liz Nugent and Karin Slaughter, so fans of those authors have the clearest reason to pick it up. Among related titles, Dervla McTiernan's own What Happened to Nina? is the nearest by author, and I See You by Elle Gray is a psychological thriller on LuvemBooks. In the Woods by Tana French and The Chain by Adrian McKinty are other character-driven crime picks.
Who should read this?
It suits readers happy to follow a larger cast through three interweaving storylines in a revenge puzzle. It is built around childhood trauma and abuse, so it fits people comfortable with those subjects. The reviews do not point to it for anyone seeking an easy mystery.
What age is it for?
It is written for adults, not teens or younger readers. The reasons are its murder plot and its focus on childhood abuse and trauma, which an Audible listener discusses. No source we found gives a recommended age.
About Dervla McTiernan
Dervla McTiernan is an Irish-Australian crime novelist. She is the author of seven novels, including the four-book Cormac Reilly series and three standalone novels, as well as audio novellas.
What content should I know about?
The sources point to a predator father who killed the sisters' mother and a leaked video used as a weapon as central to the book. One Audible listener, a self-described McTiernan fan, found it too dark for their taste. Murder and an arrest for it also drive the plot.
What is Judith Lee's personal story?
An Audible listener singles out Judith's off-duty life, including a difficult relationship with her mother and recurring nightmares that make her fear a capacity for violence. The same blogger found the Judith and Jack characters vividly real and liked the character enough to hope for more books. How her private fears intersect with the case is part of the draw for character-led readers.
Summarize this book

Summarize this book

Alexis Turner reports an assault at a police station and vanishes the same day. Three identical packages then arrive at the doors of a psychologist, a socialite and a struggling single father, each gift tailored to ruin its recipient. Judith Lee investigates, and the story braids her investigation with notes between two sisters, Renee and Margaux, who went into care.

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More by Dervla McTiernan

On Amazon

What Happened to Nina?

Dervla McTiernan

McTiernan standalone built on domestic suspicion rather than a police hunt: a young woman vanishes and her family and her boyfriend's family turn on each other.

This standalone swaps the detective-led structure for domestic suspense: Nina disappears, and as the search drags on her parents and her boyfriend's family begin accusing each other. It shows a different side of McTiernan's writing, built on grief and mistrust inside two households. It suits readers who came for the psychological pressure more than the procedural detail.

If you liked Three Reasons for Revenge

In our catalogue

I See You

Elle Gray

FBI agent Pax Arrington hunts a killer whose crimes are staged for personal impact. Matches the made-to-measure menace of the packages, at a faster, pulpier pace.

On Amazon

The Chain

Adrian McKinty

Ordinary people are coerced into harming strangers by someone who has studied them. Matches the tailored-cruelty engine and the darkness that split this book's listeners.

On Amazon

In the Woods

Tana French

Dublin detective investigates a child's murder in the woods where his own friends vanished years before. Irish crime, damaged investigator, slow-burning dread.

Not your thing?

In our catalogue

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

Benjamin Stevenson

For readers the darkness put off: a comic whodunit that keeps the murder puzzle but swaps dread for jokes and a chatty narrator at a lethal family reunion.

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