What do you think?
Rate this book
The Ultras
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
256 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2004
2 people are currently reading
304 people want to read
About the author
Eoin McNamee
32 books65 followersMcNamee was awarded a Macaulay Fellowship for Irish Literature in 1990, after his 1989 novella The Last of Deeds (Raven Arts Press, Dublin), was shortlisted for the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award for Irish Literature. The author currently lives in Ireland with his wife and two children, Owen and Kathleen.
He also writes as John Creed.
He also writes as John Creed.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 5, 2016
This is a fascinating version of an especially nasty moment in the British Government's 'dirty war'. It gets an extra star for the in-joke about someone called Joyce McKinney running a brothel (the real JM was more into kidnapping her favourite mormon), but it doesn't get top marks because McNamee has a habit of reflecting in a pseudo-poetic way on every event. Hence the novel keeps getting slowed down by stuff like 'They were hungry men. The type of men who were so hungry that even their eyes spoke of a desperate lack of food. Desperate men. Lonely men. Men who would fashion a nourishing broth of seagull heads on a desolate shore but who would never live to eat it. Men who slept with pillows beneath their heads and cold, dirty sheets round their hungry bodies and barbed-wire lies around their withered hearts.' He does tend to overdo this a bit (a little goes a long way), but it's still a fine novel.
April 30, 2025
“The border was notional. It was the distillation of the idea of boundary. It ran across damp boggy fields and low hills, rainy and remote pastures. It disappeared into rain-washed haze.”
This novel takes the real-life story of Robert Nairac and weaves it into a moody, atmospheric meditation on violence and paranoia. It’s a book about secrets, about our hopeless efforts to make sense of the unknowable past.
Robert Nairac was an elite British solider who served in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles in the 1970s. From the start he was a loose cannon, operating with little oversight, going on patrol with regular soldiers while wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a shot gun, disappearing into the night without any backup to conduct surveillance on his own. His own supervisors weren’t sure what he was up to half the time. Already during his lifetime rumors gathered that he was involved in shadowy operations, that he was MI5 or part of some clandestine intelligence agency.
Nairac became convinced that the British military could not defeat the IRA militarily. It was an intelligence war. You had to go undercover, get the locals to trust you, divulge secrets. And so towards the end of his tour he grew his hair long, grew a mustache, starting hanging out at local pubs in civilian clothes, getting up on stage and singing Danny Boy with local bands. He was convinced he’d mastered the Belfast accent, had a convincing alibi, and was supremely overconfident in his plausibility as an undercover agent.
Predictably, the IRA dragged him out of a bar one night in May 1977 and murdered him. His body was never found.
Those are the facts. The fiction part of the novel involves a cop named Blair Agnew, who works closely with loyalist factions during the 1970s, crosses paths with Nairac, and spends the rest of his life wondering what happened.
One of the most endearing aspects of the novel for me was the relationship Agnew has with his daughter, a teenager with an eating disorder. They are two damaged people who nonetheless have a genuine affection for one another. The daughter provides an important modern-day perspective, someone who grew up after the Good Friday Agreement, looking back on the conflict, trying to make sense of her father’s obsession with the period.
Another main character is David Erskine, an intelligence officer who ends up framed for murder by his own government because he knows too much and they want him out of the way. This felt a little spy-novel-ish to me, more a mechanism to underline the perfidy of British intelligence rather than a plausible thing that would have actually happened, but who knows.
This book forces you to read slowly, to really savor the language, which was equal parts beautiful and overcooked, in my opinion.
Sometimes you get beautiful writing like this:
To kill was an act of fearsome and deprave introspection. About finding a place in the hierarchies of ruin.
The other thing you learned was the speed with which the flames died away. They way they guttered and died and you became aware of the drizzle again. The boys still standing there, waiting for something, a despondency with global dimensions. The air smelt of burnt rubber, of spent polycdarbons. This was the point of their social deprivation and their limited horizons. They were attuned to feelings of inarticulate hopelessness, the crushing weight of human disappointment.
But it often feels like the prose is trying too hard, too dense, too many layers of meaning and allegory subverting the momentum. There was also a weird tic I noticed, where the author would describe a “sense” of something, or an undercurrent, or an overtone. This happened so often it became a distraction.
He liked to build German military vehicles. He liked the harsh symmetry of them, a kind of brutal grace. There was a sense of countries going under about the German military vehicles, of nationhood being obliterated.
Ampleforth was a Roman Catholic public school. It had red-brick buildings and quadrangles and was subject to reverent evening hushes, a sense of historical continuity.
There was a gratifying sense of unidentified toxins being released.
There was a sense of motifs being identified.
There was an atmosphere of mild baroque.
There was a sense of assassination in the air, dumped bodies, proxy killings.
Her lovemaking was precise and dutiful. There were themes of obedience. There were overtones of endurance.
Overall, I thought this was a brilliant novel, revelatory and emotionally authentic, only slightly marred by its ambition.
I’m curious how comprehensible it would be to someone who is unfamiliar with the Troubles, with the historical particulars of Northern Ireland. The book presumes a lot of knowledge and if you haven’t read anything about the conflict, if you’re not already familiar with the Miami Showband massacre for instance, you might not pick up on a lot of the foreshadowing.
This novel takes the real-life story of Robert Nairac and weaves it into a moody, atmospheric meditation on violence and paranoia. It’s a book about secrets, about our hopeless efforts to make sense of the unknowable past.
Robert Nairac was an elite British solider who served in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles in the 1970s. From the start he was a loose cannon, operating with little oversight, going on patrol with regular soldiers while wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a shot gun, disappearing into the night without any backup to conduct surveillance on his own. His own supervisors weren’t sure what he was up to half the time. Already during his lifetime rumors gathered that he was involved in shadowy operations, that he was MI5 or part of some clandestine intelligence agency.
Nairac became convinced that the British military could not defeat the IRA militarily. It was an intelligence war. You had to go undercover, get the locals to trust you, divulge secrets. And so towards the end of his tour he grew his hair long, grew a mustache, starting hanging out at local pubs in civilian clothes, getting up on stage and singing Danny Boy with local bands. He was convinced he’d mastered the Belfast accent, had a convincing alibi, and was supremely overconfident in his plausibility as an undercover agent.
Predictably, the IRA dragged him out of a bar one night in May 1977 and murdered him. His body was never found.
Those are the facts. The fiction part of the novel involves a cop named Blair Agnew, who works closely with loyalist factions during the 1970s, crosses paths with Nairac, and spends the rest of his life wondering what happened.
One of the most endearing aspects of the novel for me was the relationship Agnew has with his daughter, a teenager with an eating disorder. They are two damaged people who nonetheless have a genuine affection for one another. The daughter provides an important modern-day perspective, someone who grew up after the Good Friday Agreement, looking back on the conflict, trying to make sense of her father’s obsession with the period.
Another main character is David Erskine, an intelligence officer who ends up framed for murder by his own government because he knows too much and they want him out of the way. This felt a little spy-novel-ish to me, more a mechanism to underline the perfidy of British intelligence rather than a plausible thing that would have actually happened, but who knows.
This book forces you to read slowly, to really savor the language, which was equal parts beautiful and overcooked, in my opinion.
Sometimes you get beautiful writing like this:
To kill was an act of fearsome and deprave introspection. About finding a place in the hierarchies of ruin.
The other thing you learned was the speed with which the flames died away. They way they guttered and died and you became aware of the drizzle again. The boys still standing there, waiting for something, a despondency with global dimensions. The air smelt of burnt rubber, of spent polycdarbons. This was the point of their social deprivation and their limited horizons. They were attuned to feelings of inarticulate hopelessness, the crushing weight of human disappointment.
But it often feels like the prose is trying too hard, too dense, too many layers of meaning and allegory subverting the momentum. There was also a weird tic I noticed, where the author would describe a “sense” of something, or an undercurrent, or an overtone. This happened so often it became a distraction.
He liked to build German military vehicles. He liked the harsh symmetry of them, a kind of brutal grace. There was a sense of countries going under about the German military vehicles, of nationhood being obliterated.
Ampleforth was a Roman Catholic public school. It had red-brick buildings and quadrangles and was subject to reverent evening hushes, a sense of historical continuity.
There was a gratifying sense of unidentified toxins being released.
There was a sense of motifs being identified.
There was an atmosphere of mild baroque.
There was a sense of assassination in the air, dumped bodies, proxy killings.
Her lovemaking was precise and dutiful. There were themes of obedience. There were overtones of endurance.
Overall, I thought this was a brilliant novel, revelatory and emotionally authentic, only slightly marred by its ambition.
I’m curious how comprehensible it would be to someone who is unfamiliar with the Troubles, with the historical particulars of Northern Ireland. The book presumes a lot of knowledge and if you haven’t read anything about the conflict, if you’re not already familiar with the Miami Showband massacre for instance, you might not pick up on a lot of the foreshadowing.
September 8, 2011
Dark book. Similar to old John le Carré in the downbeat portrayal and uncertaintly of the spy game.
No heroes here.
Felt a bit strange being a fictionalisation of actual events, partly because of the lack of info on the actual events and partly because of the period and location of the events. Also, as it's about the troubles it is more one sided than I'd thought it would be...I don't mean it is biased, just that it looks purely at the unionist paramilitary and Brit intelligence communities. Very little insight into who they are aiming at.
It very effectively shows the randomness, horror and futility of this kind of "warfare" though.
I saw a doc on RTE the night after finishing this about the bombings in the Republic...another bit of Hx that many forget.
Very glad things have moved on and as a friend from Ulster once said "peace has broken out".
Still, the mentality of those portrayed in this book still exists.
No heroes here.
Felt a bit strange being a fictionalisation of actual events, partly because of the lack of info on the actual events and partly because of the period and location of the events. Also, as it's about the troubles it is more one sided than I'd thought it would be...I don't mean it is biased, just that it looks purely at the unionist paramilitary and Brit intelligence communities. Very little insight into who they are aiming at.
It very effectively shows the randomness, horror and futility of this kind of "warfare" though.
I saw a doc on RTE the night after finishing this about the bombings in the Republic...another bit of Hx that many forget.
Very glad things have moved on and as a friend from Ulster once said "peace has broken out".
Still, the mentality of those portrayed in this book still exists.
November 9, 2007
A good book dealing with very recent Irish history. The behavior of the British intelligence services, as personified by Robert Nairac is explored, revealing a modus operandum that would pleasure Hannibal Lector. Of course Nairac ended up in an IRA sausage mincer on active service, thereby posing the question - would the real Hannible Lector of the Irish troubles please stand up?
Politics aside, a gripping and exciting read. Elements of psycho horror a bonus.
Politics aside, a gripping and exciting read. Elements of psycho horror a bonus.
January 30, 2013
McNamee is clearly a huge DeLillo fan, and this is his Libra. An outstanding and cliche-free treatment of the Nairac enigma, for which McNamee deserves much wider credit and recognition; he is one of this island's current greats.
July 16, 2022
Not gonna lie, I'm going to definitely have to reread this one. I know enough to know I like it, and that it's brilliantly written, but it's definitely one of those books that you benefit from rereading a little slower. There's a lot packed in here, and while I found the language beautiful, I can see why some people might find it a bit of a hindrance. There's a plot here -- two, in face, one modern and one set in the past -- but the language is very poetic, and some might find it a little tough going.
Personally I was expecting it, having read another of McNamee's books before, and also this is a subject I'm pretty familiar with. It's an interesting novel, because it's based on real events, but there's no line drawn between the fact and the fiction presented. Interestingly this is pretty appropriate, as the real-life events the book draws from is also shrouded in a lot of hearsay and mystery; the facts are blended together with the fictionalisation, and for people without much of a background on Robert Nairac or South Armagh in general, it might present a confusing narrative. To clarify, this is a fictionalisation, but it's based in lots of fact, including some of the more shocking aspects like the collusion between Nairac and loyalist paramilitaries, as well as his habit of operating in highly dangerous areas with no backup. The book uses this as its core and expands upon it, both during the time and later, but all the while managing to have a distant, almost dream-like atmosphere, so that you're not entirely sure if any of it was real at all.
It's certainly a very unique bit of writing, and I can see how it might not be for some. Personally I think it lends itself well to its subject matter, and I am looking forward to rereading it at some later date after I've let it all settle for a while. No doubt I'll get even more from it then.
Personally I was expecting it, having read another of McNamee's books before, and also this is a subject I'm pretty familiar with. It's an interesting novel, because it's based on real events, but there's no line drawn between the fact and the fiction presented. Interestingly this is pretty appropriate, as the real-life events the book draws from is also shrouded in a lot of hearsay and mystery; the facts are blended together with the fictionalisation, and for people without much of a background on Robert Nairac or South Armagh in general, it might present a confusing narrative. To clarify, this is a fictionalisation, but it's based in lots of fact, including some of the more shocking aspects like the collusion between Nairac and loyalist paramilitaries, as well as his habit of operating in highly dangerous areas with no backup. The book uses this as its core and expands upon it, both during the time and later, but all the while managing to have a distant, almost dream-like atmosphere, so that you're not entirely sure if any of it was real at all.
It's certainly a very unique bit of writing, and I can see how it might not be for some. Personally I think it lends itself well to its subject matter, and I am looking forward to rereading it at some later date after I've let it all settle for a while. No doubt I'll get even more from it then.
March 17, 2020
Found this boring. The author tried to evoke a real sense of gritty working class Northern Ireland here, which to be fair he did...but the story itself was just dull, dull, dull. Nearly stopped halfway through but my pedantic 'started so i'll finish,' wouldn't allow it...shame.
September 23, 2023
See this is one of those books that is a five star absolute favourite but I don't recommend anyone else read it ever
August 2, 2025
A powerful, dark tale, well-written. Quite bleak
November 17, 2012
This was a very complicated little book in that it was a mixture of fact and fiction. A reviewer on ARRSE (http://bit.ly/VeXjp2) says, “…it has been suggested that it was published as a novel for libel reasons; it might contain more unverifiable fact than we realise. The author has obviously done a lot of research and has surely spoken to people who knew Nairac.” I have to take his word for it, given that he probably knows from whence he speaks.
My knowledge of the Nairac murder comes principally from John Parker’s “Death of a Hero”, which is referenced several times in this novel, and snippets from other books such as “Brits” by Peter Taylor and “Bandit Country” by Toby Harnden. I’m not an expert on the conflict, so trying to parse out the truth and between-the-lines nuances in this story are difficult, if not impossible for me. Having said that, it’s hard to review this novel without being tempted to say, “this was true, this was probably true, this couldn��t have been true” (which I am relatively successful in doing), or reflecting on the biases of the author (in which I will fail doing). I’m going to try and give my thoughts on this story as it notionally is; a fictional novel about espionage and war.
The story takes place on two concurrent tracks, the “present” and during the early 1970’s when The Troubles were experiencing an intense spike in violence. The character who seems to move the story along is a disgraced “rogue” policeman, who in the present is trying to give his life some meaning by collecting every scrap of information on Robert Nairac, a British Army intelligence officer who was brutally murdered, and whose body was never recovered. In the novel, rumors and questions envelop Nairac’s character- who was he really? Who was he working for? What exactly was he doing out there in South Armagh? The author doesn’t stray far from what is publicly known about Nairac. Those aspects of Nairac are (for the most part) kept vague. But let’s go back to Nairac as a fictional character.
He is the stereotype of an affluent British officer. Athletic. Not terribly bright. Brave. Outdoorsy. A theatric dilettante. Obsessed. Possibly a repressed homosexual. The author seems to posit that the latter aspect drives his character on a self-destructive path to take brazen risks in the field.
But the fictional Nairac is not at the center of the intelligence game. Enter Clyde Knox, a MI6 officer directing a complex psychological warfare operation of which all the main characters are simply pawns. Nairac just happens to be useful for Knox. As is RUC sergeant Blair Agnew, whose purpose in Knox’s game is…frankly, pretty unclear!
The PSYOP aspect is something that I think shows the authors biases. Knox’s PSYOP is complex and bizarre, with the intent of heightening the fear and anxiety of everyone in Northern Ireland including the Provos, the Catholics, the Protestants, and even the British Army. Honestly, other than smoothing the way for Army, RUC, UDR and Loyalist paramilitary cooperation in targeting PIRA, what purpose would the actions designed to heighten anxiety among the public serve? To drive popular support away from PIRA? I think the opaque and mysterious world of PSYOP is a device Eoin McNamee uses to explain away the irrational horrors that occurred during The Troubles. I mean, y’know, surely someone in British intelligence had to be pulling the strings? Nothing can be an accident, right?
In the end, I enjoyed the book as a piece of fiction. Definitely something interesting for minds more knowledgeable than mine to place in the canon of Troubles literature. To those unacquainted with the real story, it might seem like a rambling Delillo-esque mess. And God- do I hate anyone other than Delillo, writing like Delillo. But because of how I’m acquainted with the story, I found it compelling. A dark little murder mystery/spy game set in a horrific milieu.
My knowledge of the Nairac murder comes principally from John Parker’s “Death of a Hero”, which is referenced several times in this novel, and snippets from other books such as “Brits” by Peter Taylor and “Bandit Country” by Toby Harnden. I’m not an expert on the conflict, so trying to parse out the truth and between-the-lines nuances in this story are difficult, if not impossible for me. Having said that, it’s hard to review this novel without being tempted to say, “this was true, this was probably true, this couldn��t have been true” (which I am relatively successful in doing), or reflecting on the biases of the author (in which I will fail doing). I’m going to try and give my thoughts on this story as it notionally is; a fictional novel about espionage and war.
The story takes place on two concurrent tracks, the “present” and during the early 1970’s when The Troubles were experiencing an intense spike in violence. The character who seems to move the story along is a disgraced “rogue” policeman, who in the present is trying to give his life some meaning by collecting every scrap of information on Robert Nairac, a British Army intelligence officer who was brutally murdered, and whose body was never recovered. In the novel, rumors and questions envelop Nairac’s character- who was he really? Who was he working for? What exactly was he doing out there in South Armagh? The author doesn’t stray far from what is publicly known about Nairac. Those aspects of Nairac are (for the most part) kept vague. But let’s go back to Nairac as a fictional character.
He is the stereotype of an affluent British officer. Athletic. Not terribly bright. Brave. Outdoorsy. A theatric dilettante. Obsessed. Possibly a repressed homosexual. The author seems to posit that the latter aspect drives his character on a self-destructive path to take brazen risks in the field.
But the fictional Nairac is not at the center of the intelligence game. Enter Clyde Knox, a MI6 officer directing a complex psychological warfare operation of which all the main characters are simply pawns. Nairac just happens to be useful for Knox. As is RUC sergeant Blair Agnew, whose purpose in Knox’s game is…frankly, pretty unclear!
The PSYOP aspect is something that I think shows the authors biases. Knox’s PSYOP is complex and bizarre, with the intent of heightening the fear and anxiety of everyone in Northern Ireland including the Provos, the Catholics, the Protestants, and even the British Army. Honestly, other than smoothing the way for Army, RUC, UDR and Loyalist paramilitary cooperation in targeting PIRA, what purpose would the actions designed to heighten anxiety among the public serve? To drive popular support away from PIRA? I think the opaque and mysterious world of PSYOP is a device Eoin McNamee uses to explain away the irrational horrors that occurred during The Troubles. I mean, y’know, surely someone in British intelligence had to be pulling the strings? Nothing can be an accident, right?
In the end, I enjoyed the book as a piece of fiction. Definitely something interesting for minds more knowledgeable than mine to place in the canon of Troubles literature. To those unacquainted with the real story, it might seem like a rambling Delillo-esque mess. And God- do I hate anyone other than Delillo, writing like Delillo. But because of how I’m acquainted with the story, I found it compelling. A dark little murder mystery/spy game set in a horrific milieu.
Read
May 2, 2023I seem to remember this being a slightly fictionalised version of Bandit Country by Toby Harden
July 2, 2021
Probably my all-time favourite novel
April 1, 2017
'Amazing' not the word, exactly, except for the skill used to tell this bitter, dreadful tale. Pieced together in a grubby patchwork of stained and fraying episodes of varying ages and hung about with trgedies large ad small. Menacing and awful but unable to put it down.
April 20, 2018
I suppose this is 'literary crime fiction'.
The reason I say this is because the prose of extremely hard-boiled, overly melodramatic, too much second-rate philosophising over nothing, etc.
One can get past this in an actual crime novel, because the only thing that really matters in those books is the who, the how and the what, ie. the plot.
This book is a sequence of scenes that are not really related to each other. There are so many characters, some of which occasionally converse, but mostly drink a lot and emote. (Probably drunk). Occasionally, a fight breaks out, quite violent, or a bomb will go off (for no reason, seeing as it deliberately doesn't kill anyone but the men in the van), or some rapey thing happens, or somebody's in an asylum, or something else.
Is it thus a postmodern 'poem', a song of hard-boiled crime words strung together? Well, the prose is mostly overdone bullshit, so the lack of coherent plot or character is problematic.
Reviews seem bothered with the 'truth' of this character, Nairac. Seeing as I, indeed, do not have strong memories of The Troubles (being only a little boy and English), none of 'the truth' resonates for me. That means the book will only work if you are a particular kind of person from a particular kind of place. One who likes dull, repetitive hymns to violence and spurts of nothing. The story is supposed to represent the police officer who is so morally compromised, he becomes as criminal as anyone else. I suppose the author succeeds in this, because I could not tell who was doing what at any given moment. So, it's a poem about morally compromised authority figures? That sounds like it might work. It doesn't. Because the prose is such nonsensical rubbish. Reading it is like wading through a swamp. Although, if I was in a swamp, I would at least be outside, not reading this crap.
The reason I say this is because the prose of extremely hard-boiled, overly melodramatic, too much second-rate philosophising over nothing, etc.
One can get past this in an actual crime novel, because the only thing that really matters in those books is the who, the how and the what, ie. the plot.
This book is a sequence of scenes that are not really related to each other. There are so many characters, some of which occasionally converse, but mostly drink a lot and emote. (Probably drunk). Occasionally, a fight breaks out, quite violent, or a bomb will go off (for no reason, seeing as it deliberately doesn't kill anyone but the men in the van), or some rapey thing happens, or somebody's in an asylum, or something else.
Is it thus a postmodern 'poem', a song of hard-boiled crime words strung together? Well, the prose is mostly overdone bullshit, so the lack of coherent plot or character is problematic.
Reviews seem bothered with the 'truth' of this character, Nairac. Seeing as I, indeed, do not have strong memories of The Troubles (being only a little boy and English), none of 'the truth' resonates for me. That means the book will only work if you are a particular kind of person from a particular kind of place. One who likes dull, repetitive hymns to violence and spurts of nothing. The story is supposed to represent the police officer who is so morally compromised, he becomes as criminal as anyone else. I suppose the author succeeds in this, because I could not tell who was doing what at any given moment. So, it's a poem about morally compromised authority figures? That sounds like it might work. It doesn't. Because the prose is such nonsensical rubbish. Reading it is like wading through a swamp. Although, if I was in a swamp, I would at least be outside, not reading this crap.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews