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Collusion

by Stuart Neville
Soho Crime. Oct. 2010. c.384p. ISBN 978-1-56947-855-4. $25. M
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Former IRA gunman Gerry Fegan returns in Neville's follow-up to The Ghosts of Belfast. After (spoiler alert!) the massacre at Bull O'Kane's farmhouse, O'Kane is alive but desperate to kill Fegan, the only man to ever beat him. Fegan himself has left Northern Ireland, but a strange connection to six-year-old Ellen McKenna keeps him tied to the events of that night. When Ellen and her mother are threatened by O'Kane in an attempt to draw Fegan out, he returns to Northern Ireland to right the wrong that put them in danger. Ellen's father, policeman Jack Lennon, who has never been a part of her life, is also desperate to keep his daughter safe, and the two men search for Ellen and her mother amidst the collusion of Loyalists and Republicans, Irish and English, and killers and cops.
VERDICT Neville's sophomore effort is just as well written and just as violent as his debut, winner of the LA Times book prize for best crime fiction 2009. Neville creates sympathy for his characters in the midst of violence and betrayal and reveals Northern Ireland as a country still under the effects of decades of terror. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 5/1/10.]
Reviewed by Lisa Hanson O'Hara, Univ of Manitoba Libs., Winnepeg , Aug 01, 2010
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