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Running with Crows: The Life and Death of a Black and Tan
It is 1921. In Ireland a war of bloody reprisals wages between republican volunteers and Royal Irish Constabulary. The RIC, their ranks augmented by Great War veterans - dubbed the Black & Tans - face daily ambushes and sieges. Outrages are perpetrated by both sides in this struggle for an independent Ireland. Meanwhile, in Dublin's Mountjoy Gaol, Constable William Mitchell awaits execution for the murder, in the sleepy Wicklow town of Dunlavin, of respected magistrate Mr Robert Dixon.
Who was Mitchell and did he in fact kill the magistrate? What political machinations make Mitchell's execution a foregone conclusion? Who is the sinister character whose life runs in parallel to Mitchell's and whose path briefly crosses his - with fatal consequences?
DJ Kelly's latest research-based novel reflects the true, yet hitherto untold, story of the only member of the British crown forces to be executed for murder during the Irish War of Independence.
Who was Mitchell and did he in fact kill the magistrate? What political machinations make Mitchell's execution a foregone conclusion? Who is the sinister character whose life runs in parallel to Mitchell's and whose path briefly crosses his - with fatal consequences?
DJ Kelly's latest research-based novel reflects the true, yet hitherto untold, story of the only member of the British crown forces to be executed for murder during the Irish War of Independence.
298 pages, Paperback
First published February 3, 2013
4 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
D.J. Kelly
6 books8 followersManchester-born author DJ Kelly - who also writes as Denise Beddows - took early retirement in 2010 from a career which had enabled her to work and play in 20+ countries across 4 continents and to learn a number of languages. Her background is in research, investigation and intelligence analysis.
A member of the Society of Authors, and of the Crime Writers Association, as Denise Beddows she writes true crime and spy thrillers. As DJ Kelly, she writes biographical fiction and local history. She also writes articles for local, national and international press and journals, reviews books and films for a variety of publishers and organisations, and is a guest speaker for a number of community groups. She is married and lives in Buckinghamshire. She actively supports Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival.
Her books include the espionage thrillers:
'The Hunt for WOTAK'
'When the Grey Wolf Sings'
'A Long Road to Revenge'
'Shearwater Point'
And the true crime books:
'Odd Man Out - A Motiveless Murder?'
'The Cheetham Hill Murder - A Convenient Killing?'
Her biographical fictions includes:
'A Wistful Eye - The Tragedy of a Titanic Shipwright' and
'Running with Crows - The Life and Death of a Black and Tan'
Her local history books are:
'Bulstrode: Splendour and Scandal of a Buckinghamshire Mansion'
'Buckinghamshire Spies and Subversives',
'The Famous and Infamous of The Chalfonts & District'
'The Chalfonts & Gerrards Cross at War'
A member of the Society of Authors, and of the Crime Writers Association, as Denise Beddows she writes true crime and spy thrillers. As DJ Kelly, she writes biographical fiction and local history. She also writes articles for local, national and international press and journals, reviews books and films for a variety of publishers and organisations, and is a guest speaker for a number of community groups. She is married and lives in Buckinghamshire. She actively supports Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival.
Her books include the espionage thrillers:
'The Hunt for WOTAK'
'When the Grey Wolf Sings'
'A Long Road to Revenge'
'Shearwater Point'
And the true crime books:
'Odd Man Out - A Motiveless Murder?'
'The Cheetham Hill Murder - A Convenient Killing?'
Her biographical fictions includes:
'A Wistful Eye - The Tragedy of a Titanic Shipwright' and
'Running with Crows - The Life and Death of a Black and Tan'
Her local history books are:
'Bulstrode: Splendour and Scandal of a Buckinghamshire Mansion'
'Buckinghamshire Spies and Subversives',
'The Famous and Infamous of The Chalfonts & District'
'The Chalfonts & Gerrards Cross at War'
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 3, 2013
This is a well written research based historical narrative which reflects the true story of William Mitchell. The author has invested a great deal of time and energy in recounting his story, and it is to be commended that the sympathetic and skilful management of the facts ensures that the spirit of William Mitchell and his chequered life is opened up to scrutiny. The interesting interpretation of political events and the strategic placing of these events into a contextual historical setting could have become rather a bleak read, but far from depressing, the story abounds with an energy and gusto which is rather refreshing. I began to really like Mitchell, who although deeply flawed, showed an amazing resilience, and I must admit to wiping away a little tear at the ending, which I hoped could have been different.
The overall professional quality of the novel is good. I found the cover appealing, and the inclusion in the epilogue, of a "what happened next" to some of the characters is a nice way to finish. I have no hesitation in recommending this very human approach to history.
I reviewed this novel for the Historical Novel Society as a UK Indie Reviewer
The overall professional quality of the novel is good. I found the cover appealing, and the inclusion in the epilogue, of a "what happened next" to some of the characters is a nice way to finish. I have no hesitation in recommending this very human approach to history.
I reviewed this novel for the Historical Novel Society as a UK Indie Reviewer
November 22, 2013
So, who were the men of the Black and Tans? In her absorbing fact-based, historical novel ‘Running with Crows: Life and Death of a Black and Tan’, DJ Kelly has filled in the sketchy existence of the only Black and Tan to be hanged for a crime committed in Ireland, William Mitchell. In doing so she provides excellent characterizations of other temporary policemen with whom Mitchell had joined the Royal Irish Constabulary at the time of the Anglo-Irish war (the 'Tan' war) in 1920. The fact that this man, known during his army career as ‘Mitch’ was a distant relative of hers, that he was almost certainly framed for the crime with which he was charged, that he hadn’t participated in any atrocities himself, and that he was, in fact, an Irishman born in Dublin—at least twenty-five percent of the Black and Tans were Irish--all add piquancy to the novel.
William Mitchell’s father was a British soldier, who had fought honorably in the Boer War. While stationed in Ireland, he married a Dublin protestant girl. He and his wife started their family in one of the more respectable streets of the poor Dublin working class, brothel-packed area area known as ‘the Monto’ in which Protestant and Catholic struggled cheek by jowl to make a living.
With his father often away in the army, Mitch was drawn into petty crime. His first acquaintance with ‘the peelers’ made his mother warn him that, ‘Them as runs with the crows will be shot with the crows’. A pattern of innocent people in Mitch’s orbit being made to suffer for his misdemeanours began. The first of them was his good-looking mother, sexually abused in a Dublin police cell when a ‘helpful’ policeman asked her to come in and pick up Mitch.
DJ Kelly’s description of Mitch’s first love, Rose a sixteen-year old prostitute living in one of the Monto brothels, provides a colorful description of the Monto at the beginning of 20th century Dublin and the simple delights poor Dublin couples could offer themselves in their rare hours of leisure. The harrowing way in which Rose met her death, in Westmoreland Hospital, known as ‘The Lock’ sticks in the mind long after the novel is put down. Mitch realized she had probably been ‘euphemized’ by the nursing staff who were in the habit of smothering young women too far gone with venereal disease, after moving them to the end of the ward from which they could be silently evacuated at night without alerting the other diseased ‘brassers’.
After William Mitchell’s father left the British army he decided to move the whole family back to his native Bermondsey in search of better work. In London Mitch began by working alongside his father in a stinking tannery, DJ Kelly’s horrific depiction of which would make Engels jealous of its narrative power in describing the labors of the English working class poor. Mitch could read and write, so he was quickly promoted. He had the brains to make a successful and honest man out of himself, but time and again he returned to the pattern of theft he had first espoused in Dublin. Although his thefts gradually became more serious, and involved more money, none of them involved violence. When the crimes he committed in the pursuit of easy riches were found out he never suffered as much as his family whose reputation was damaged by association with him.
As the London police net closed in for a crime that would have put him behind bars for years, Mitchell's angry father marched him to the British army recruiting office. DJ Kelly’s descriptions of William Mitchell’s time in India, and the decent army comrades he lived with, showed how he found a sort of calm without crime there. Her descriptions of Colonial India are just as telling as the way in which she writes about Dublin and London. But once back in England, mourning the losses of the friends he had left behind him, one of whom had fallen to disease and the other to the sort of marriage with an Anglo-Indian bride which might also have ensured Mitch’s happiness, William Mitchell fell back into his bad habits and was dishonourably discharged from the army.
At the beginning of the 1914-1918 war William Mitchell managed to hide his dishonourable discharge and he joined up again, only to be disappointed by the lack of action. After the war he couldn’t be sure if he had killed a single German. Whenever he was not ‘hurrying up and waiting’ he spent a major part of his time in the army being punished for insubordination. DJ Kelly’s description of the Abancourt Number 1 military prison near Rouen ; how the conscientious objectors, mostly Quakers, went naked and were kicked and battered there by sadistic guards because of their refusal to wear uniforms ; the ways in which the Australian and New Zealander soldiers were brutally manhandled and provoked into a ‘non-mutiny’ that resulted in two ‘Dinkums’ nevertheless being shot for ‘mutiny’ points up the inhumane way in which ‘Great War’ soldiers were mistreated, often by officers who punished their men to conceal their own own incompetence. A few examples of these officers, some of them from the Colonies, later turned up in the RIC auxiliaries where, dare one say it, they gave the Black and Tans an even worse name than they would have earned solely from their own activities.
Ironically, it was when William Mitchell, under pressure from his new wife, a decent woman whom he had fooled into believing he was wealthier than he was, decided to earn an honest living that he decided to apply for the job of temporary policeman with the RIC. His misgivings about joining up became evident when the newly recruited Black and Tans were driven through Dublin in a personnel carrier to be familiarized with the streets. It suddenly occurred to him as they entered the ‘Monto’ that he would feel ashamed if any of his former neighbors saw him riding in the back of a police vehicle.
During the few short weeks that he spent as a Tan after that drive through Dublin, although he had earlier participated in intimidatory raids into the countryside, he seems to have engaged in none of the more serious crimes agains the Irish population that made his comrades deservedly infamous.
In even a longish review it is difficult to do justice to DJ Kelly’s novel. In addition to the examples I have already mentioned of Dublin, Bermondsey, India and the Somme, the book contains some very fine passages, such as the description of how William Mitchel struggled to maintain an erection as he guiltily resorted to the services of a prostitute in a French WWI brothel. While in the act, DJ Kelly successully plumbs the depths of the male mind to bring forth William Mitchell's memories of his Rose, the sixteen year old prostitute he had loved in the Monto came back to him :
'He glanced at his upper arm and the red rose he had had tattooed there in memory of his first love. He now felt his desire abate. This wouldn’t do. He gazed out of the window, over the gray slate roof of the neighboring cattle byre, to the bleak landscape beyond. He regarded the desolate acres of dark gray mud fading into a paler gray in what should have been a summer scene.
On the horizon, a lone tree trunk stripped of its foliage and branches arose erect out of the wasteland, crooked like a dead man’s accusing finger. Closing his eyes did not help. In his head the tree became a real dead man’s finger, like the ones he had seen poking out of the earth in the trenches.’
Mitchell spent less than two months as a Black and Tan before he was sentenced to die by hanging on the same morning as two IRA men were also executed.
This fine novel, which sheds light on an area that is still often talked about in Ireland, but not in any great detail, reminded me of a non-fiction book, ‘Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland’, in which Christopher Browning showed how Battalion 101 became one of Nazi Germany’s most efficient extermination units. Browning iinterviewed hundreds of the killers who had survived the war. In pre-war civilian life they had been ‘ordinary men’ and after the war they went back to being ordinary men. Although most of them were fully conscious of what they had done, they could not explain how they had been manipulated into such savagery under Hitler. In an Amazon.com review Tim Appelo wrote, ‘...the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but... they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes.’
DJ Kelly could have depicted William as a ‘sad-sack’ ex-British serviceman, but instead of that she has painted him with all his humanity, as an average man with some very serious flaws, who grew up in the poverty-stricken days of pre-1914 Ireland and England. The repetitive nature of his character at times leads the reader to wonder if there is such a thing as ‘free will’, or if the fate of at least a minority of humanity is determined even before it leaves the womb.
In the end, William Mitchell began to run with bigger crows than his mother could ever have imagined, the British authorities in Ireland. Far from thanking Mitchell for his efforts on their behalf they killed him as an expedient scapegoat hopefully to placate their high placed critics back in Britain. As DJ Kelly shows in the Court Martial scene, William Mitchell was represented by a competent and honest Irish Barrister who was time after time prevented from presenting a professional defense. William Mitchell’s fate had been signed and sealed even before he walked into the room.
Between the eve of William Mitchell’s death and the morning of his execution, DJ Kelly takes the reader through a guided tour of the British Empire which Ireland was struggling to leave. I advise you to buy this book.
William Mitchell’s father was a British soldier, who had fought honorably in the Boer War. While stationed in Ireland, he married a Dublin protestant girl. He and his wife started their family in one of the more respectable streets of the poor Dublin working class, brothel-packed area area known as ‘the Monto’ in which Protestant and Catholic struggled cheek by jowl to make a living.
With his father often away in the army, Mitch was drawn into petty crime. His first acquaintance with ‘the peelers’ made his mother warn him that, ‘Them as runs with the crows will be shot with the crows’. A pattern of innocent people in Mitch’s orbit being made to suffer for his misdemeanours began. The first of them was his good-looking mother, sexually abused in a Dublin police cell when a ‘helpful’ policeman asked her to come in and pick up Mitch.
DJ Kelly’s description of Mitch’s first love, Rose a sixteen-year old prostitute living in one of the Monto brothels, provides a colorful description of the Monto at the beginning of 20th century Dublin and the simple delights poor Dublin couples could offer themselves in their rare hours of leisure. The harrowing way in which Rose met her death, in Westmoreland Hospital, known as ‘The Lock’ sticks in the mind long after the novel is put down. Mitch realized she had probably been ‘euphemized’ by the nursing staff who were in the habit of smothering young women too far gone with venereal disease, after moving them to the end of the ward from which they could be silently evacuated at night without alerting the other diseased ‘brassers’.
After William Mitchell’s father left the British army he decided to move the whole family back to his native Bermondsey in search of better work. In London Mitch began by working alongside his father in a stinking tannery, DJ Kelly’s horrific depiction of which would make Engels jealous of its narrative power in describing the labors of the English working class poor. Mitch could read and write, so he was quickly promoted. He had the brains to make a successful and honest man out of himself, but time and again he returned to the pattern of theft he had first espoused in Dublin. Although his thefts gradually became more serious, and involved more money, none of them involved violence. When the crimes he committed in the pursuit of easy riches were found out he never suffered as much as his family whose reputation was damaged by association with him.
As the London police net closed in for a crime that would have put him behind bars for years, Mitchell's angry father marched him to the British army recruiting office. DJ Kelly’s descriptions of William Mitchell’s time in India, and the decent army comrades he lived with, showed how he found a sort of calm without crime there. Her descriptions of Colonial India are just as telling as the way in which she writes about Dublin and London. But once back in England, mourning the losses of the friends he had left behind him, one of whom had fallen to disease and the other to the sort of marriage with an Anglo-Indian bride which might also have ensured Mitch’s happiness, William Mitchell fell back into his bad habits and was dishonourably discharged from the army.
At the beginning of the 1914-1918 war William Mitchell managed to hide his dishonourable discharge and he joined up again, only to be disappointed by the lack of action. After the war he couldn’t be sure if he had killed a single German. Whenever he was not ‘hurrying up and waiting’ he spent a major part of his time in the army being punished for insubordination. DJ Kelly’s description of the Abancourt Number 1 military prison near Rouen ; how the conscientious objectors, mostly Quakers, went naked and were kicked and battered there by sadistic guards because of their refusal to wear uniforms ; the ways in which the Australian and New Zealander soldiers were brutally manhandled and provoked into a ‘non-mutiny’ that resulted in two ‘Dinkums’ nevertheless being shot for ‘mutiny’ points up the inhumane way in which ‘Great War’ soldiers were mistreated, often by officers who punished their men to conceal their own own incompetence. A few examples of these officers, some of them from the Colonies, later turned up in the RIC auxiliaries where, dare one say it, they gave the Black and Tans an even worse name than they would have earned solely from their own activities.
Ironically, it was when William Mitchell, under pressure from his new wife, a decent woman whom he had fooled into believing he was wealthier than he was, decided to earn an honest living that he decided to apply for the job of temporary policeman with the RIC. His misgivings about joining up became evident when the newly recruited Black and Tans were driven through Dublin in a personnel carrier to be familiarized with the streets. It suddenly occurred to him as they entered the ‘Monto’ that he would feel ashamed if any of his former neighbors saw him riding in the back of a police vehicle.
During the few short weeks that he spent as a Tan after that drive through Dublin, although he had earlier participated in intimidatory raids into the countryside, he seems to have engaged in none of the more serious crimes agains the Irish population that made his comrades deservedly infamous.
In even a longish review it is difficult to do justice to DJ Kelly’s novel. In addition to the examples I have already mentioned of Dublin, Bermondsey, India and the Somme, the book contains some very fine passages, such as the description of how William Mitchel struggled to maintain an erection as he guiltily resorted to the services of a prostitute in a French WWI brothel. While in the act, DJ Kelly successully plumbs the depths of the male mind to bring forth William Mitchell's memories of his Rose, the sixteen year old prostitute he had loved in the Monto came back to him :
'He glanced at his upper arm and the red rose he had had tattooed there in memory of his first love. He now felt his desire abate. This wouldn’t do. He gazed out of the window, over the gray slate roof of the neighboring cattle byre, to the bleak landscape beyond. He regarded the desolate acres of dark gray mud fading into a paler gray in what should have been a summer scene.
On the horizon, a lone tree trunk stripped of its foliage and branches arose erect out of the wasteland, crooked like a dead man’s accusing finger. Closing his eyes did not help. In his head the tree became a real dead man’s finger, like the ones he had seen poking out of the earth in the trenches.’
Mitchell spent less than two months as a Black and Tan before he was sentenced to die by hanging on the same morning as two IRA men were also executed.
This fine novel, which sheds light on an area that is still often talked about in Ireland, but not in any great detail, reminded me of a non-fiction book, ‘Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland’, in which Christopher Browning showed how Battalion 101 became one of Nazi Germany’s most efficient extermination units. Browning iinterviewed hundreds of the killers who had survived the war. In pre-war civilian life they had been ‘ordinary men’ and after the war they went back to being ordinary men. Although most of them were fully conscious of what they had done, they could not explain how they had been manipulated into such savagery under Hitler. In an Amazon.com review Tim Appelo wrote, ‘...the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but... they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes.’
DJ Kelly could have depicted William as a ‘sad-sack’ ex-British serviceman, but instead of that she has painted him with all his humanity, as an average man with some very serious flaws, who grew up in the poverty-stricken days of pre-1914 Ireland and England. The repetitive nature of his character at times leads the reader to wonder if there is such a thing as ‘free will’, or if the fate of at least a minority of humanity is determined even before it leaves the womb.
In the end, William Mitchell began to run with bigger crows than his mother could ever have imagined, the British authorities in Ireland. Far from thanking Mitchell for his efforts on their behalf they killed him as an expedient scapegoat hopefully to placate their high placed critics back in Britain. As DJ Kelly shows in the Court Martial scene, William Mitchell was represented by a competent and honest Irish Barrister who was time after time prevented from presenting a professional defense. William Mitchell’s fate had been signed and sealed even before he walked into the room.
Between the eve of William Mitchell’s death and the morning of his execution, DJ Kelly takes the reader through a guided tour of the British Empire which Ireland was struggling to leave. I advise you to buy this book.
September 9, 2014
Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing said: 'There are no rules for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be'. She also said: 'There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth'.
Running With Crows is a shining example of Lessing's philosophy. It is the very best kind of novel - one which does not conform to the tedious and formulaic rules of some polytechnic creative writing teacher, but which presents a true, and therefore credible story in so skilful a way as it enables us to engage with its tragic anti-hero and to be left feeling affected by the outcome.
From the outset, we know what Mitchell's fate will be. That is, after all, why we bought the book. We want to see one of the despicable Black & Tans hanged. It is the moving journey on which the author takes us, a journey in which we experience the conditions and events which shape the man, which keep us engaged from start to finish.
The author's in-depth research into official case files, regimental diaries and trial transcripts, combined with her own experience of Ireland, London and India and accounts of the man given by his descendants, make this a unique book. She presents us with the desperate resentment of Dublin slum dwellers, the stink and clangour of industrial Bermondsey and the inequitable condition of India's Eurasian community.
Writing an anti-hero, without making him a fully sympathetic character, is challenging, yet Kelly achieves this. Clearly, Mitchell was not the most honourable of men. He ran with the crows and he died with the crows. We are invited to draw our own conclusions as to whether justice was served.
There are some finely drawn characters, incuding the impetuous and ephemeral prostitute, Rose Cassidy; the lugubrious and fair Police Inspector, Larry Delaney, and the larriking and tragic New Zealander, Jack Braithwaite. Their background and fate is cleverly expanded upon in the book's epilogue. The tragic story has some memorable moments, such as the hilarious regimental tea dance in India; the tension of the men waiting to go over the top in the trenches of the Western Front, and the unexpectedly moving scene with Mitchell's wife and baby on the eve of his execution. As 'Peeler' author Kevin McCarthy says in his own review of Kelly's book: 'the execution scene (is) a small triumph of restrained, clinical observation'.
Running With Crows is a shining example of Lessing's philosophy. It is the very best kind of novel - one which does not conform to the tedious and formulaic rules of some polytechnic creative writing teacher, but which presents a true, and therefore credible story in so skilful a way as it enables us to engage with its tragic anti-hero and to be left feeling affected by the outcome.
From the outset, we know what Mitchell's fate will be. That is, after all, why we bought the book. We want to see one of the despicable Black & Tans hanged. It is the moving journey on which the author takes us, a journey in which we experience the conditions and events which shape the man, which keep us engaged from start to finish.
The author's in-depth research into official case files, regimental diaries and trial transcripts, combined with her own experience of Ireland, London and India and accounts of the man given by his descendants, make this a unique book. She presents us with the desperate resentment of Dublin slum dwellers, the stink and clangour of industrial Bermondsey and the inequitable condition of India's Eurasian community.
Writing an anti-hero, without making him a fully sympathetic character, is challenging, yet Kelly achieves this. Clearly, Mitchell was not the most honourable of men. He ran with the crows and he died with the crows. We are invited to draw our own conclusions as to whether justice was served.
There are some finely drawn characters, incuding the impetuous and ephemeral prostitute, Rose Cassidy; the lugubrious and fair Police Inspector, Larry Delaney, and the larriking and tragic New Zealander, Jack Braithwaite. Their background and fate is cleverly expanded upon in the book's epilogue. The tragic story has some memorable moments, such as the hilarious regimental tea dance in India; the tension of the men waiting to go over the top in the trenches of the Western Front, and the unexpectedly moving scene with Mitchell's wife and baby on the eve of his execution. As 'Peeler' author Kevin McCarthy says in his own review of Kelly's book: 'the execution scene (is) a small triumph of restrained, clinical observation'.
March 3, 2013
A literary work of historical crime fiction based on a true story - well researched - it leaves the reader to make up his/her own mind as to whether the Tan actually killed the magistrate - like the fact that there were photos of the main character, who was a real person - a useful epilogue as I do like to know 'what happened next' - author writes knowledgeably about India, Dublin and south London - gritty descriptions especially of life in the trenches - dispels the popular myth that the Tans were 'the sweeping of English gaols' as historian Brian Inglis had famously claimed - an engaging story - even the villains were sympathetically drawn - not so much a 'whodunnit' as a 'did-he-do-it'
May 27, 2013
I do like History and I adore true stories. This book kept me captivated from the very beginning. I was transported back to the early part of the 20th Century. I never really understood the History of Ireland, but now I do. I was rooting for Mitch all the way. I loved the fact that he spent a lot of time in India, a country I know well.
The research must have been overwhelming sometimes. D.J.Kelly's ' Running with Crows' would make a good play or Film
The research must have been overwhelming sometimes. D.J.Kelly's ' Running with Crows' would make a good play or Film
October 16, 2017
Excellent recounting of history
Excellent recounting of a very interesting time in Irish history. The Author gives life to forgotten figures in history. Worth a read
Excellent recounting of a very interesting time in Irish history. The Author gives life to forgotten figures in history. Worth a read
December 19, 2015
This is a well-researched and competently written novel, full of astonishing detail. The novel chronicles the life of Constable William Mitchell, a man accused of murdering a magistrate.
The author describes the defendants’ childhood, family life and his time in the Army. Excellent scene setting and atmospheric writing create a very authentic and captivating novel. Historically this is hugely informative and clears up some misconceptions. Kelly stays close to her research data which gives the reader the advantages of a documentary, yet, written with engaging characters and a great sense of drama and suspense.
Whether you want to read a good story or would like to know more about the conflicts between republican volunteers and the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence, this is the book for you.
A great read.
The author describes the defendants’ childhood, family life and his time in the Army. Excellent scene setting and atmospheric writing create a very authentic and captivating novel. Historically this is hugely informative and clears up some misconceptions. Kelly stays close to her research data which gives the reader the advantages of a documentary, yet, written with engaging characters and a great sense of drama and suspense.
Whether you want to read a good story or would like to know more about the conflicts between republican volunteers and the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence, this is the book for you.
A great read.
January 28, 2016
I love it when a book strikes the right balance between factual research and drama, and this is one of those books.
In a solid and confident effort, D.J. Kelly brings to life the story of Constable William Mitchell, a regular man who finds himself on trial for the murder of a magistrate.
Various chapters illustrate the life of Mitchell, from a young age to his life as a soldier. Beautifully fleshed out and spiked with fascinating details and facts, her narrative oozes authority and credibility while the drama provides enough hooks to get drawn in on an emotional level as well.
I knew little about this part of Irish history and feel I come away fromt he novel educated and entertained. Kelly's writing is eloquent and smooth and makes this a real treat.
Highly recommended.
In a solid and confident effort, D.J. Kelly brings to life the story of Constable William Mitchell, a regular man who finds himself on trial for the murder of a magistrate.
Various chapters illustrate the life of Mitchell, from a young age to his life as a soldier. Beautifully fleshed out and spiked with fascinating details and facts, her narrative oozes authority and credibility while the drama provides enough hooks to get drawn in on an emotional level as well.
I knew little about this part of Irish history and feel I come away fromt he novel educated and entertained. Kelly's writing is eloquent and smooth and makes this a real treat.
Highly recommended.
July 6, 2016
Very well researched and written.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews