Member Review

Turncoat – A metaphysical thriller,

Anthony J Quinn returns with a new crime thriller Turncoat, which he has called a metaphysical detective tale set during the Troubles. Northern Ireland and the times of the Troubles have provided a rich seam of writing for Quinn, and for some many be some uncomfortable reading. Whilst this may be a novel, it bounds along the truth of that time very closely, and sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

Desmond Maguire is unusual for an RUC officer in that he is a Catholic in a predominately Protestant police service. Distrusted by his Protestant colleagues and seen as a collaborator with an occupying force by the Catholics, he really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Life will get harder for him.

Maguire is the sole survivor of a murderous ambush, a Belfast police detective is forced into a desperate search for a mysterious informer that takes him to a holy island on Lough Derg, a place shrouded in strange mists and hazy rain, where nothing is as it first appears to be. An Ireland where his life may be in danger, the pilgrims do not trust, the priests do not trust him, and the police spies do not trust him. He knows he needs to find the truth and some how this holy island has the answers, he just needs to find them.

People will find Turncoat, haunting and unsettling, especially as you read the mental descent of Maguire into to paranoia. This is also a story of guilt, survival and the terrible price of self-knowledge, all through the voice of a detective with a double life. You feel that descent into self-doubt and questioning previous actions. What he discovers is sinister and the closer he is drawn in to the violence that surrounds that period of time.