The Ghosts of Belfast
Non-series
Stuart
Neville
Soho Crime (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-56947-600-4 (1569476004)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-600-0 (9781569476000)
Publication Date: October 2009
List Price: $25.00
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Fegan has been a “hard man,” an IRA killer
in northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day
and night by twelve ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a
butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In
order to appease them, he’s going to have to kill the men who
gave him orders.
As he’s working his way down the list he encounters a woman who
may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and
is an outsider too. Now he has given Fate -- and his quarry -- a
hostage. Is this Fegan’s ultimate mistake?
Review: Stuart
Neville offers an unusual twist on the serial killer thriller with his
debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast.
Gerry Fagen is a man tormented by his past. An IRA terrorist who was
not only good at his "job", but seemed to revel in it, he's now haunted
by the souls of 12 innocent people who lost their lives as a
consequence of his actions, his self-described followers. Respected by
his former colleagues -- some of whom have taken prominent posts in
Ireland's government, some of whom remain true to the cause and long
for the days when terror ruled the day -- Fagen is left alone to drown
his pain at the local pub. Until he kills one of the men he holds
ultimately responsible for the deaths of one of his innocents ... and
the number of his followers drops to 11. Fagen realizes that he can
only find inner peace when he kills those members who either ordered,
or were present at the time of, the innocents' deaths, but his former
colleagues think Fagen has gone mad and is a threat to their current
way of life. And before Fagen can expose them, they are determined to
kill him first.
There is no denying that The Ghosts
of Belfast is brilliantly written with expressive narrative and
crisp dialog. The characters are multi-layered, complex, and
intricately drawn; the setting appropriately atmospheric, dark and
dank, suitably mysterious. Even the potentially baffling politics of
The Troubles and subsequent uneasy peace in Northern Ireland, against
which the action takes place, are handled in a understandable manner.
From a technical perspective, it's nearly flawless. The problem here is
the story. Though the plot is well conceived, it isn't developed much,
if at all, after the first 70 pages or so, when the number of followers
drops from the original twelve to nine (and will, predictably, drop to
zero at the end). "Who's next," Fagen asks his followers at this point.
Who indeed. It gets a little repetitive here. To be sure, there is
more, but it takes the form of a completely unnecessary, even
intrusive, subplot involving Fagen's relationship with a woman that is
overlaid on the main story, seemingly written as an afterthought to
support a plot point towards the end, but isn't truly integrated and
adds little substantive.
A tough call here: there is so much to like about The Ghosts of Belfast that it
deserves a recommendation but with the caveat that the storyline
doesn't really deliver all that it could.
Special thanks to Soho Press for providing a copy of The Ghosts of Belfast for this review.
Review Copyright © 2010 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read The Ghosts of Belfast? How would you rate it?
Non-series novels by this author …
The Ghosts of Belfast
Soho Crime (Hardcover), October 2009
ISBN-10: 1-56947-600-4 (1569476004)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-600-0 (9781569476000)
Omnimystery keywords for The Ghosts of Belfast ...
Location(s) referenced: Belfast, Ireland.
