Longlisted for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award
A propulsive tale of espionage, betrayal, loyalty, and love, set
during the Troubles in Northern Ireland--for readers of The Goldfinch
and classic le Carré.
Marty Ransom, son of the Captain and heir to a hilltop estate near
Waterford in independent Ireland, lives a comfortable, boring life with
his tennis-playing, Anglican wife, Sugar, and a job in the Department of
External Affairs. Among their closest friends are an Anglo-Irish couple,
a banker who was Sugar's childhood flame and his alluring diplomat wife,
Alison. But Marty is a man divided. While his father fought with the
British Army and found respectability in marriage, Marty's closest
childhood friend was his cousin Iggy, the rebel son of a working-class
Irish patriot whose gift for tinkering with radio parts has grown into a
bomb maker's skill.
When Marty is lured into keeping tabs on the growing IRA activities in
Ireland's troubled North, he finds himself walking a tightrope of
conflicting yearnings and loyalties, balancing between nations, lovers,
and parts of his own past, never knowing whom he can trust. But after
Bloody Sunday escalates the violence and the British mount a desperate
operation to take out a notorious IRA bomber, he must choose, and risk
putting everything he loves most--his wife and young family--as well as
his own life, at risk.
