The Ghosts of Belfast

The Tuesday night book group will discuss Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast (published as The Twelve in the U.K.) tomorrow night at 7:30 pm.
The novel begins:


'Maybe if he had one more drink they'd leave him alone. Gerry Fegan told himself that lie before every swallow. He chased the whiskey's burn with a cool black mouthful of Guinness and placed the glass back on the table. Look up and they'll be gone, he thought.
No. They were still there, still staring. Twelve of them if he counted the baby in its mother's arms.'

Gerry Fegan was a hit man for the IRA, served his time in the notorious Maze Prison, and spends his life seeking escape from the ghosts of the twelve people he murdered during the Troubles. To appease his ghosts, Fegan decides to kill the men who ordered the hits. There begins this violent story. Ghosts fits into a growing body of contemporary Irish "noir" thrillers and will appeal to fans of John Connelly  and James Ellroy.

Related websites:
http://www.ghostsofbelfast.com/
Soho Press
NPR - Chapter One, excerpt from the novel
CAIN - Conflict Archive on the INternet
BBC - The Search for Peace