Starred Review. With this stunning debut, Neville joins a select group of Irish writers, including Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes and Adrian McKinty, who have reinvigorated the noir tradition with a Celtic edge. Gerry Fegan, a former IRA hit man haunted by the ghosts of the 12 people he killed, realizes the only way these specters will give him rest is to systematically assassinate the men who gave him his orders. Though those in the militant IRA underworld have written him off as a babbling drunk and a liability to the movement, they take note when their members start turning up dead. Meanwhile, Fegan is attracted to Marie McKenna, a relative of one of the newly slain men and a pariah to the Republicans. Can Fegan satisfy his demons and redeem himself, or will the ghosts of Belfast consume him first? This is not only an action-packed, visceral thriller but also an insightful insider's glimpse into the complex political machinations and networks that maintain the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland. (Oct.)
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“Not only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times.”
—John Connolly
“Neville’s novel is a coldly lucid assessment of the fragility of the Irish peace … a rare example of legitimate noir fiction.”
—The New York Times Book Review
"Perfect for summer—especially if you want to be reminded of what a blessing it is to live in relatively peaceful times."
—Slate
“The best first novel I’ve read in years…. It’s a flat-out terror trip.”
—
James Ellroy“
The Ghosts of Belfast is a smart and atmospheric thriller about the many causes served and corrupt pockets lined courtesy of sectarian hatred.”
—
Maureen Corrigan, NPR.org
"Stuart Neville is Ireland's answer to Henning Mankell."
—
Ken Bruen“Stuart Neville's tightly wound, emotionally resonant account of an ex-IRA hit man's struggle to conquer his past, displays an acute understanding of the true state of Northern Ireland, still under the thumb of decades of violence and terrorism.”
—
Los Angeles Times“Both a fine novel and a gripping thriller: truly this is a magnificent debut.”
—
Ruth Dudley Edwards, author of
Ten Lords-A-Leaping“Stuart Neville goes to the heart of the perversity of paramilitarism.”
—
Sean O’Callaghan, author of
The Informer “An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville’s
The Ghosts of Belfast is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction.”
—
Jeff Abbott“Stuart Neville will go far as a writer . . . It’s a wonderful novel, brave and fierce and true to its place and time. I sincerely hope it sells a million copies.”
—
Crimespree "Stuart Neville delivers an inspired, gritty view of how violence’s aftermath lasts for years and the toll it takes on each person involved.
The Ghosts of Belfast also insightfully delves into Irish politics, the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland, redemption, guilt and responsibility.”
—
Oline Cogdill, Mystery Scene“Stuart Neville belongs to a younger generation of writers for whom the region's darkest years are history—but that history endures, as his first novel,
The Ghosts of Belfast, shockingly demonstrates.... In scene after gruesome scene, Neville attempts to persuade us that this time around, with this repentant murderer, the killing is different.”
—Washington Post“Neville’s debut is as unrelenting as Fegan’s ghosts, pulling no punches as it describes the brutality of Ireland’s 'troubles' and the crime that has followed, as violent men find new outlets for their skills. Sharp prose places readers in this pitiless place and holds them there. Harsh and unrelenting crime fiction, masterfully done.”
—
Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review“[A] stunning debut.... This is not only an action-packed, visceral thriller but also an insightful insider’s glimpse into the complex political machinations and networks that maintain the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland.”
—
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“In this well-crafted and intriguing series debut, Neville evokes the terrors of living in Belfast during 'the Troubles' and manages to makes Fegan, a murderer many times over, a sympathetic character…The buzz around this novel is well deserved and readers will be anticipating the next book in the series.”
—
Library Journal, Starred Review“Explosive and absorbing ...
The Ghosts of Belfast is an intense meditation on obligation, necessity, and war. Within Stuart Neville’s rich vocabulary, complacency is not a word to be found.”
—
Sacramento News and Review
“
The Ghosts of Belfast is a tale of revenge and reconciliation shrouded in a bloody original crime thriller.... Fierce dialogue and the stark political realities of a Northern Ireland recovering from the ‘Troubles’ drive this novel. It's not difficult to read this brilliant book as an allegory for a brutal past that must be confronted so the present ‘can be clean.’”
—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel“In his stunning debut, Stuart Neville delivers an inspired, gritty view of how violence's aftermath lasts for years and the toll it takes on each person involved.
The Ghosts of Belfast also insightfully delves into Irish politics, the uneasy truce in Northern Ireland, redemption, guilt and responsibility ... Neville delivers an emotionally packed novel that is both empathetic and savage. Neville never makes Gerry's visions of ghosts seem trite or silly. Like his countryman, John Connolly, Neville keeps the supernatural aspects believable ...
The Ghosts of Belfast is a haunting debut.”
—
South Florida Sun-Sentinel“If you by chance have never read Stuart Neville’s Belfast Trilogy, it’s time to redeem yourself.”
—
Grift Magazine“A brilliant thriller: unbearably tense, stomach churningly frightening … a future classic of its time.”
—
The Observer
“Stuart Neville's blistering debut thriller is a walk on the wild side of post-conflict Northern Ireland that brilliantly exposes the suffering still lurking beneath the surface of reconciliation and the hypocrisies that sustain the peace.”
—Metro (UK)“Neville has the talent to believably blend the tropes of the crime novel and those of a horror, in the process creating a page-turning thriller akin to a collaboration between John Connolly and Stephen King.”
—Sunday Independent (Ireland)“A gripping, original thriller."
—
Sunday Times“[Neville] is … uniquely, tragically equipped to be able to think through complex issues of justice and mercy.”
—
Irish Times
About the Author
Stuart Neville is a partner in a multimedia design business based in Armagh, northern Ireland. This novel, also known as The Twelve in the UK and Ireland, is the first in a series.
From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Anna Mundow The hideous, decades-long conflict in the tiny British province of Northern Ireland has inspired fiction that ranges from outstanding thrillers such as Gerald Seymour's "Harry's Game," surely one of his best, to quieter novels such as Louise Dean's "This Human Season" and Seamus Deane's sublime masterpiece, "Reading in the Dark." Stuart Neville belongs to a younger generation of writers for whom the region's darkest years are history -- but that history endures, as his first novel, "The Ghosts of Belfast," shockingly demonstrates. "Even now [that] the politicians had taken over the movement," Neville writes of the Irish Republican Army paramilitaries, "even though they were shifting away from the rackets, the extortion, the thieving, people still needed to be kept in line." Belfast in the new millennium may be a business opportunity, not a terrorist target, but organized crime and intimidation persist. There is even the odd bombing. The present is not the problem, however, for Gerry Fegan. Once an infamous torturer and killer for the IRA, Fegan has served his prison sentence, but he remains haunted -- literally -- by the crimes of the past. The ghosts of 12 murder victims shadow him day and night, demanding not remorse -- their deaths were not all his doing -- but revenge. One day, for instance, Fegan sees one of his ghosts pointing at a politician's head. "He mimed firing, his hand thrown upward by the recoil." This is a dead boy, tortured and executed decades earlier on the orders of Fegan's friend and IRA commander, Michael McKenna. But now the boy and his dead companions give the orders, and an anguished Fegan obeys as the novel opens with the first brutal killing of his new mission. We know what will follow because the book's sections are numbered like a countdown, from 12 to 1 for the avenging ghosts, but the predictable action is complicated by a clever espionage twist. British intelligence is still lurking in Northern Ireland, and these fresh murders activate an undercover agent whose path is destined to cross Fegan's. There is also a brave woman and her innocent child who may represent Fegan's last shot at redemption. This noir thriller plays out in a Belfast that, even in summer sunshine, remains oppressively gray. The clannishness of its inhabitants is vividly evoked in Neville's descriptions of a tiny rowhouse packed with mourners for a murdered man's wake or a seedy pub where the bartender has learned to look the other way when violence arrives. A riot scene, one of the novel's best, captures a new generation's appetite for blood and an old veteran's nostalgia. "Kids know nothing these days," an aging IRA thug observes before wading in to instruct the young rioters. "When we were kids we'd have had this place wrecked by now." Yet much has changed. From the deserted waterfront, Fegan contemplates the lights of a new entertainment complex patronized by those "young enough to have no memory of men like Fegan, affluent enough not to care." Former IRA paramilitary commanders are now politicians; and Fegan's revenge killings could destabilize the jittery new power-sharing government, something that neither the paramilitaries-turned-politicians nor the British government can allow. Meanwhile, when Fegan kills a corrupt priest who is related to one of the IRA's old guard, he earns himself another enemy, one with a taste for sadism. We observe this world chiefly through Fegan's eyes and later through the eyes of Campbell, the ex-British soldier turned undercover agent, both of whom are as redundant in this post-conflict world as any aging dock worker. "If there's peace, if it's really over, then what use are we?" an old paramilitary asks. Or as Neville puts it, "After eighty-odd years, this tiny country finally had a future. And Campbell did not." With the exception of Fegan, for whom we are expected to feel some sympathy, Neville's portraits of the IRA leadership and its foot soldiers are clear-eyed and unforgiving (the British officials, by contrast, are rather cartoonish). Northern Ireland's recent historical background is also deftly compressed, albeit with a few too many journalistic cliches. The moral of "The Ghosts of Belfast," voiced by the mother of a murdered boy, is that "everybody pays." Even when peace is declared and even when killers become politicians. This may be dramatically satisfying, for who does not relish a good revenge tale, but it also allows Neville to have it both ways as he sets his novel in the aftermath of mass violence and yet depicts, in repellent detail, scenes of torture and murder that re-animate that shameful past. "He had always thought of killing as work," Fegan recalls. "He hadn't considered himself a skilled craftsman, more a skilled laborer." In scene after gruesome scene, Neville attempts to persuade us that this time around, with this repentant murderer, the killing is different. bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
