McCormac

If you peer into the seething waters of today's terror and uncertainty, Neill McCormac's is the image you might pray would stare back at you. Born on the wrong side of the tracks in 'Bandit Country, South Armagh', but living on the right side of history in MI5, the Security Service, he is pivotal to the maintenance of an uneasy peace in Northern Ireland. This collection of short stories, spanning 1981 to 2017, is the second of the Cleanskin Apologues and it explains the man, his mission and what tools he acquired as he grew up. It further expands the backdrop to the novels Easter, Smoke and Mirrors and Shape, Shine and Shadow and it illuminates in harrowing detail the last quarter-century of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The first such collection of stories, entitled McCann, was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2015 and it traced the life and times of Michael McCann, McCormac's IRA nemisis. You don't have to have read any of the previous books to appreciate McCormac, and you don't have to have lived through the Troubles to feel a sense of what a momentous and innovative conflict it was and for how long. As with all of the books, this is a study too of human nature at its most complex and of the intelligence process at its most intriguing; but by the end you will also be reminded that McCann is still out there somewhere, and that you may have come across him. You may have spoken to him - you've almost certainly stood next to him - and who knows, you may even count him amongst your friends. At the very least you should ask yet again, do you really know who your neighbours are?