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.
A keeper of secrets and a purveyor of lies, the detective finds himself surrounded by enemies disguised as pilgrims, and is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the purgatorial island, where he is forced to confront a series of disturbing secrets and ghosts in his own life.
Haunting and unsettling, Turncoat is a story of guilt, survival, and the terrible price of self-knowledge, told through the voice of a detective with a double life. Descending into paranoia and self-doubt, he uncovers a sinister panorama of cover-ups and conspiracies. The closer he edges to the truth, the deeper he is drawn into the currents of power, violence and guilt engulfing his country . . .***
When the car carrying him and his police colleagues turned into the lane shortly after ten o'clock, the driver killed the headlights and let the vehicle roll along the track. IRISH BORDER 1994
***
(@noexitpress, 26 November 2020, 256 pages, ebook, #ARC from the publisher via # NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 20 November via @RandomTTours)
***
***
I was really looking forward to reading Turncoat as it's set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and I've never read fiction set in this era before so was looking forward to seeing how the author tackled it. The book is uncomfortable to read at times, especially when the Troubles seep through the writing and become more of an uncomfortable truth than fiction. The subject matter may make some uncomfortable. I thought Desmond was a great character, a Catholic working in a mostly protestant police force, rubbing his colleagues up the wrong way and constantly forced to justify every thought and action. The driving force of the book is an IRA ambush which leaves several officers dead, an IRA informant who seems to have vanished with the finger of suspicion pointing firmly at Desmond, mostly because he flees the scene and does not contact his superiors. Much of the book is set on Lough Derg, a holy island where Desmond searches for the truth and a way to prove his innocence. Turncoat is haunting and unsettling.
