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 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?
Collusion
When Detective Inspector Jack Lennon tries to track down his former lover, Marie McKenna, and their daughter, his superiors tell him to back off. But now an assassin stalks Belfast, tying up loose ends for a vengeance-driven old man. As Lennon unravels a conspiracy that links his daughter to a killer named Fegan, the line between friend and enemy blurs.
I have been a musician, a composer, a teacher, a salesman, a film extra, a baker and a hand double for a well known Irish comedian, but I'm currently a partner in a successful multimedia design business in the wilds of Northern Ireland.
I have published short stories in Thuglit, Electric Spec and Every Day Fiction. THE TWELVE is my first novel, and will be published in the UK and Commonwealth by Harvill Secker, an imprint of Random House, on July 2nd 2009. It will be published in the USA as THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST by Soho Press, New York, and by Random House Kodansha in Japan.
This is the first time I've ever read Stuart Neville and I really enjoyed it. This first novel has strong characters and a hard-charging plot but also has a more literary sheen. The time and setting of IRA-riddled Belfast adds a strong historical backdrop to what, in essence, is a story of loyalties strained by decades of strife and misunderstood motives. A good, dense story of redemption that doesn't lack for depth. Well worth reading.
Very fine, precise and evocative writing. Excellent characters and a wonderfully labrynthine plot. I hope this series is somehow extended, but will look forward to anything Mr. Neville writes.
Another crazy, bad-ass fellow kicking butt as required. Not sure about the connection to the dead and the young girl but there is plenty of intrigue and did I mention the plethora of butt kicking.