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Shadow Dancer
Colette McVeigh: widow...mother...terrorist. A woman who has lived the Republican cause for all of her thirty-three years. A woman whose brothers are both heavily involved at a senior level in the IRA, whose husband was killed by the British security forces.
Apprehended by the police in an aborted bombing raid in London, Colette is given a simple choice: talk and see her children again, or stay silent and spend the rest of her life watching them grow up from behind the bars of a prison cell.
Gradually and unwillingly she is led to betray her past by her young MI5 handler, David Ryan, who has never doubted where his loyalties lie. But when he follows Colette across the Irish Sea to Belfast, the very tenets of his existence - trust, loyalty and honesty - are quickly sacrificed on the pyre of the province's history. And, as he watches Colette put herself in increasing danger to fulfil her side of the bargain, he realizes that his professional integrity is irrevocably and fatally compromised...
Apprehended by the police in an aborted bombing raid in London, Colette is given a simple choice: talk and see her children again, or stay silent and spend the rest of her life watching them grow up from behind the bars of a prison cell.
Gradually and unwillingly she is led to betray her past by her young MI5 handler, David Ryan, who has never doubted where his loyalties lie. But when he follows Colette across the Irish Sea to Belfast, the very tenets of his existence - trust, loyalty and honesty - are quickly sacrificed on the pyre of the province's history. And, as he watches Colette put herself in increasing danger to fulfil her side of the bargain, he realizes that his professional integrity is irrevocably and fatally compromised...
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
114 people are currently reading
308 people want to read
About the author
Tom Bradby
18 books293 followersTom Bradby is a British journalist and novelist. He has been political editor for ITV News since July 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
April 28, 2023
Boiled down to the simplest form, Shadow Dancer is a spy fiction novel that details the story of Colette McVeigh, a member of IRA and David Ryan, a young MI5 case officer with “the Troubles” as the backdrop. After a failed bombing attempt, Colette was given the choice to be a “tout” and spy on her brothers who are part of the upper echelon of the Provisional IRA for the MI5 with David as her handler or go to jail and watch her two children get raised by the state.
SPY FICTION: LE CARRE VS FLAMING
While there are certainly more to it than just these two, for simplicity’s sake, spy fiction can be divided into two camps; Le Carre and Flaming. Le Carre, who was a member of both MI6 and MI5 find the work to be a grind, not just in a work sense but in term of human morality and ethics. So, his works move towards such, moral dilemma that one in the spying world would have to deal with. To add to that, Le Carre was influenced by strong literary writers such as Charles Dickens and C.S Lewis and thus his writing, the prose especially would in a way are in that vein. Flaming on the other hand, is the opposite of that. His time as at the top of British intelligence and organizing black operations made him yearn for such adventures. His James Bond novels reflects that perfectly well. The missions are grand, the risk is twice as big and the heroes are portrayed to be the ultimate good guys canonized in the text.
Shadow Dancer fits nicely in the Le Carre camp. It’s a character driven piece. It spend time on the human side of the story. Colette’s a mother, a daughter and a sister. All of these are shown and every facet of her character plays into the decision that she would end up spying on her brothers for the MI5. Similarly, we are shown the human side of the opposite in David, Colette’s handler and an MI5 officer. While the recruitment of Colette as an asset for the security service is a big deal on paper, the department he’s working in shows an attitude that lacks caring and enthusiasm when it comes to Colette. This is where David struggle with his mission and tries to justified the means with the end goal when signs of militant element creeps into law enforcement. Compared to Colette however, the novel seems content to let David’s situation define him rather than reveal new layers about the character. While not entirely white as in black and white, he’s less of a grey area battling aloof, manipulative and secretive colleagues to protect his charge, and not much more than that.
While the story of these two characters are front and centre, the world they are inhabiting in are larger and cast a shadow onto them. They felt so small despite how intimately we get to know both Colette and David.
A SERIES OF VIGNETTE
Unlike Le Carre however is Tom Bradby’s prose. It’s short and descriptive. It’s very detached and distant despite how vivid Bradby paint the picture of whatever moment you were reading. There’s a sense of melancholy reading it. Insights into the characters are so pronouncedly intimate, yet the world is distant that it felt cold and bleak that as a reader, I feel like anything can go wrong or get worse at any moment. It reads like a collection of vignettes that showcase the characters rather than worrying about telling one big picture towards the end.
IN THE END
Ultimately, Shadow Dancer is a great novel if you are craving for a grounded spy fiction in the similar vein to Le Carre’s output without feeling like a pastiche. The prose, while nothing to write home about, compliment the story well with the cold and distant tone it is aiming for. The story doesn’t really progress towards an ending rather than it meanders in the moments that these characters lived through.
SPY FICTION: LE CARRE VS FLAMING
While there are certainly more to it than just these two, for simplicity’s sake, spy fiction can be divided into two camps; Le Carre and Flaming. Le Carre, who was a member of both MI6 and MI5 find the work to be a grind, not just in a work sense but in term of human morality and ethics. So, his works move towards such, moral dilemma that one in the spying world would have to deal with. To add to that, Le Carre was influenced by strong literary writers such as Charles Dickens and C.S Lewis and thus his writing, the prose especially would in a way are in that vein. Flaming on the other hand, is the opposite of that. His time as at the top of British intelligence and organizing black operations made him yearn for such adventures. His James Bond novels reflects that perfectly well. The missions are grand, the risk is twice as big and the heroes are portrayed to be the ultimate good guys canonized in the text.
Shadow Dancer fits nicely in the Le Carre camp. It’s a character driven piece. It spend time on the human side of the story. Colette’s a mother, a daughter and a sister. All of these are shown and every facet of her character plays into the decision that she would end up spying on her brothers for the MI5. Similarly, we are shown the human side of the opposite in David, Colette’s handler and an MI5 officer. While the recruitment of Colette as an asset for the security service is a big deal on paper, the department he’s working in shows an attitude that lacks caring and enthusiasm when it comes to Colette. This is where David struggle with his mission and tries to justified the means with the end goal when signs of militant element creeps into law enforcement. Compared to Colette however, the novel seems content to let David’s situation define him rather than reveal new layers about the character. While not entirely white as in black and white, he’s less of a grey area battling aloof, manipulative and secretive colleagues to protect his charge, and not much more than that.
While the story of these two characters are front and centre, the world they are inhabiting in are larger and cast a shadow onto them. They felt so small despite how intimately we get to know both Colette and David.
A SERIES OF VIGNETTE
Unlike Le Carre however is Tom Bradby’s prose. It’s short and descriptive. It’s very detached and distant despite how vivid Bradby paint the picture of whatever moment you were reading. There’s a sense of melancholy reading it. Insights into the characters are so pronouncedly intimate, yet the world is distant that it felt cold and bleak that as a reader, I feel like anything can go wrong or get worse at any moment. It reads like a collection of vignettes that showcase the characters rather than worrying about telling one big picture towards the end.
IN THE END
Ultimately, Shadow Dancer is a great novel if you are craving for a grounded spy fiction in the similar vein to Le Carre’s output without feeling like a pastiche. The prose, while nothing to write home about, compliment the story well with the cold and distant tone it is aiming for. The story doesn’t really progress towards an ending rather than it meanders in the moments that these characters lived through.
April 3, 2017
Belfast, 1980s: IRA volunteer Colette McVeigh is caught in an operation by British secret services and faces little option but to become an informer or she will never see her son again. Reluctantly attending secret meetings with her handler, she begins passing secret information across about her own brothers, both volunteers in the IRA. And Colette is being watched by her brother Gerry. If she makes one false move, they will kill her. If it isn't the British who take her away from her son, it could be her own family.
January 10, 2020
It was going quite well but one of the men kept going on about how bloody good looking Collette was and I've decided NO MORE! that's it MEN, 1 strike and I'm abandoning the book. Murakami no more, I'm getting militant for 2020.
August 18, 2019
This was Toms first novel and altough it was a little confusing in places it was a good read.
October 10, 2019
Very good read,
Would recommend,a good 1st book by Tom Bradby, I will be looking for more novels by this author for sure.
Would recommend,a good 1st book by Tom Bradby, I will be looking for more novels by this author for sure.
October 26, 2012
While not an area of history I have ever read I detail (the Irish Troubles), the backdrop of this time in Ireland's recent history and its overwhelming influence on the actions of the main characters was extremely interesting and makes for a powerful, if somewhat disturbing, thriller. The fact that so many people would give up so much, including their closest family members and children, for what some would perceives as an impossible cause, is one of the main tenents of the book, and one that the author plays well upon. Also has one of the more uncomfortable torture scenes committed tp paper that I have read for a while...
April 20, 2020
Tom Bradby has written an exceptional novel, predominantly set in Belfast during the final years before the Good Friday Agreement. I've read a few books set in Northern Ireland during the 'troubles' but nothing comes close to catching the hatred, futility and tragedy of these dreadful times as well as Shadow Dancer.
The characterisation is very strong from the brothers determined to avoid peace at any price, the young married woman living on a knife edge as she plays out the role of unwilling tout to the naive MI5 agent who believes he can make a difference. The plot is completely credible and the narrative is told with tension increasing on every page. Many scenes are very depressing, in keeping with the descriptions of Belfast, a city at war.
I remember seeing the film of this novel eight years ago. It was nowhere as convincing as the novel as the movie makers juggled with the plot to produce a totally different, and far less convincing, outcome.
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil, Liberating Belsen, Two Families at War and The Summer f '39, all published by Sacristy Press.
The characterisation is very strong from the brothers determined to avoid peace at any price, the young married woman living on a knife edge as she plays out the role of unwilling tout to the naive MI5 agent who believes he can make a difference. The plot is completely credible and the narrative is told with tension increasing on every page. Many scenes are very depressing, in keeping with the descriptions of Belfast, a city at war.
I remember seeing the film of this novel eight years ago. It was nowhere as convincing as the novel as the movie makers juggled with the plot to produce a totally different, and far less convincing, outcome.
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil, Liberating Belsen, Two Families at War and The Summer f '39, all published by Sacristy Press.
February 27, 2024
The story of a lifelong Republican woman from an IRA family, who is turned into an informer for British intelligence, this novel kept me reading but I couldn't shake the feeling that it could have given me more than it did.
None of the characters have too much depth and there's no growth. Colette is coerced into becoming - in IRA parlance - a tout. She forms an attachment to her British handler, David Ryan, which seems to become more important to her than her family, even though it seems quite slight. Ryan returns her interest, but again, it's all fairly basic: she's pretty, so he fancies her and she's in danger, so he doesn't want her to die.
Colette seems an unlikely person for her brothers to involve in major terrorist operations because she's so flat and dull, like an automaton. Ryan's not much better. The most interesting character for me was Paddy, Colette's brother, who apparently believes in the cause but seems worn down by the relentless lifelong struggle of being an IRA unit commander.
The setting is interesting and the sense of the British being intruders in Northern Ireland comes through, but there was a better story in here than this one, namely Paddy's story instead of Colette's.
None of the characters have too much depth and there's no growth. Colette is coerced into becoming - in IRA parlance - a tout. She forms an attachment to her British handler, David Ryan, which seems to become more important to her than her family, even though it seems quite slight. Ryan returns her interest, but again, it's all fairly basic: she's pretty, so he fancies her and she's in danger, so he doesn't want her to die.
Colette seems an unlikely person for her brothers to involve in major terrorist operations because she's so flat and dull, like an automaton. Ryan's not much better. The most interesting character for me was Paddy, Colette's brother, who apparently believes in the cause but seems worn down by the relentless lifelong struggle of being an IRA unit commander.
The setting is interesting and the sense of the British being intruders in Northern Ireland comes through, but there was a better story in here than this one, namely Paddy's story instead of Colette's.
May 14, 2017
Los críticos han sido especialmente duros con esta obra, posiblemente por que saben más de la historia de Irlanda que un servidor.
En mi caso he disfrutado de sobremanera esta lectura. Tal vez porque al ser padre puedo aproximarme mejor a la ansiedad que sufre una madre por el futuro de su familia, de su hijo.
Desgraciadamente algunos de los personajes sufren de falta de profundidad, sin embargo la historia es sumamente interesante, con varios giros en la linea de argumento.
Las agendas ocultas, los ideales vacíos, las malas decisiones, la desesperación por encontrar opciones y soluciones, la fenomenología, las circunstancias, acción, pasión, esto y mucho más es Shadow Dancer. Definitivamente una vez que comiences a leer no la podrás dejar.
No es una obra trepidante y de continua acción, pero tiene mensajes intensos, precisamente por eso fue llevada a la pantalla, aunque cabe decir que la película no le hace honor al escritor, aunque la actuación de Clive Owen es fenomenal.
Obra escrita ampliamente recomendada.
En mi caso he disfrutado de sobremanera esta lectura. Tal vez porque al ser padre puedo aproximarme mejor a la ansiedad que sufre una madre por el futuro de su familia, de su hijo.
Desgraciadamente algunos de los personajes sufren de falta de profundidad, sin embargo la historia es sumamente interesante, con varios giros en la linea de argumento.
Las agendas ocultas, los ideales vacíos, las malas decisiones, la desesperación por encontrar opciones y soluciones, la fenomenología, las circunstancias, acción, pasión, esto y mucho más es Shadow Dancer. Definitivamente una vez que comiences a leer no la podrás dejar.
No es una obra trepidante y de continua acción, pero tiene mensajes intensos, precisamente por eso fue llevada a la pantalla, aunque cabe decir que la película no le hace honor al escritor, aunque la actuación de Clive Owen es fenomenal.
Obra escrita ampliamente recomendada.
September 2, 2025
Unremittingly Bleak
The Troubles. The undeclared war in Northern Ireland. Families obliged to show loyalty to one side or the other, caught up in a never-ending spiral of violence. Shadow Dancer is the code name for an IRA daughter, feeling she has no choice in anything but desperate to survive, allowing herself to be turned by the Brits to betray her country, her cause and her own family. `
The premise is interesting but the principal characters never feel authentic and their thought processes are chaotic and contrived. For the sake of plot development they abandon all common sense and make stupid and self-destructive decisions. I hoped they would all self-combust as I could see no hope nor redemption for anyone.
The Troubles. The undeclared war in Northern Ireland. Families obliged to show loyalty to one side or the other, caught up in a never-ending spiral of violence. Shadow Dancer is the code name for an IRA daughter, feeling she has no choice in anything but desperate to survive, allowing herself to be turned by the Brits to betray her country, her cause and her own family. `
The premise is interesting but the principal characters never feel authentic and their thought processes are chaotic and contrived. For the sake of plot development they abandon all common sense and make stupid and self-destructive decisions. I hoped they would all self-combust as I could see no hope nor redemption for anyone.
February 5, 2020
A thrilling debut from Tom Bradby. I have to be a little honest, the characters are a bit hard to warm up too, their background details are vague at best and the constant switch between point-of-view causes confusion at the start of the novel, though it becomes better as you get use to it.
The thrilling element about this book is that it is not centred around a crime or event. It revolves around the characters, particularly Colette, where she has to make choices upon choices that will change the path of her life forever. A physiological thriller that strikes at your heart once you get into the story with a heart-wrenching ending that saddens your heart. Go read it.
The thrilling element about this book is that it is not centred around a crime or event. It revolves around the characters, particularly Colette, where she has to make choices upon choices that will change the path of her life forever. A physiological thriller that strikes at your heart once you get into the story with a heart-wrenching ending that saddens your heart. Go read it.
February 21, 2019
Insightful look at the IRA efforts to destroy the British will to fight. Seen from the perspective of an Irish family and a British agent handling an underground contact, the story follows the development of a peace initiative and the opposition within the IRA. Somewhat gruesome description of murder of "touts" - those who turn on their fellow IRA members. The young mother, Colette, is conflicted by her love for her two young children and her Mother and brothers. What a horrible time it was to live in northern Ireland for all involved!
February 11, 2021
An enjoyable read. A twist at the end showing the plot to be well considered. The story concerns a Republican family embroiled in the troubles. Although involved at senior levels, and having carried out atrocities, acting as moles to the British has penetrated senior personnel, no matter unlikely it may have seemed. Then the IRA spots the treachery, sets traps to confirm, and carries out treachery killings.
Graphically described, and well written, ensuring a short time to complete the book.
I will read some of his later books, and look forward to so doing.
Graphically described, and well written, ensuring a short time to complete the book.
I will read some of his later books, and look forward to so doing.
June 26, 2024
Like other reviewers, I did find this novel a little confusing from time to time. It has a tendency to jump from from situation to the other. As someone who has direct experience of The Troubles, it was interesting to read a different take. Parts of the book sounded very real, such as the fear the terror groups had over the general population. Spoiler alert, I'm not sure how realistic the plot to kill the UK prime minister in Parliament actually is.
However, for a first novel, this is good, and well done to the author.
However, for a first novel, this is good, and well done to the author.
March 13, 2021
Don't know if you would call this a thriller or an insight into the IRA and MI5.
I enjoyed this book but more for it's background content on the workings of the IRA and MI5. The story was based on a plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister in the House of Commons. In the background was an ex IRA member working as an informant to MI5. Not a particularly fast moving tale but enjoyable all the same if you like books based on the Irish troubles.
I enjoyed this book but more for it's background content on the workings of the IRA and MI5. The story was based on a plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister in the House of Commons. In the background was an ex IRA member working as an informant to MI5. Not a particularly fast moving tale but enjoyable all the same if you like books based on the Irish troubles.
September 17, 2023
An okay book about the IRA and espionage. Not a bad book, per se, but perhaps a little bland? The premise was good, the writing was competent but I couldn't help feeling that the characters were dull as if they had been taken from one of the many television show about the troubles. Nevertheless, glad to have read it and it's worth a shot if you're want a spy-themed novel set in Ireland.
December 17, 2020
Characters are realistically portrayed and the book gives one version of the many intrigues and events of this period.
Enjoyed reading it and found Tom Bradby to be a decent writer and will now read more of his books.
Enjoyed reading it and found Tom Bradby to be a decent writer and will now read more of his books.
June 4, 2022
A sad, depressing story about the tragedy that befalls an Irish family active in the IRA. The writing style is good and the prose is not difficult to read but the savagery and brutality depicted makes this anything but an enjoyable read.
March 18, 2020
Evilness knows no boundaries and the innocent suffer.
April 25, 2020
I loved the movie so wanted to see if the book was worth checking out, Im glad I did and best of all its got a few twists in the plot different from the movie.
July 19, 2020
414 pages
December 4, 2020
Sad but good read
April 7, 2021
The book gives a fascinating insight into the Irish troubles but it makes a slightly depressing read, and it certainly doesn’t end on a high note...
August 11, 2021
Very good and well written set in the times of trouble in Ireland . Good read
January 1, 2022
I couldn't put this book down. A thoroughly good read.
July 26, 2023
The sister of an IRA leader is recruited by MI5. The mystery is scary and does not have a happy ending.
Read
January 31, 2024The characters were so unpredictable.
April 20, 2024
Very good book depicting what it was like during the troubles in Northern Ireland.
June 22, 2024
Ending was pointless, but I guess that's the point the author was trying to make.
May 20, 2025
I didn’t really ever get into this as I found it confusing, mainly because of the numerous characters, many of whom did not seem to more than a name.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews