SPECIAL FEATURE: Q & A with guest Sheena Wilkinson on her first novel for adults, MRS HART'S MARRIAGE BUREAU

 

Well-established as one of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers for young people, Sheena Wilkinson has won many prizes for her work, including five Children’s Books Ireland awards. Her first novel for adults, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, is just out from HarperCollins Ireland. Sheena lives in County Derry, on the shores of Lough Neagh, and when she’s not writing she is usually walking her dogs or singing.

Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau:  April McVey hasn’t a romantic bone in her body. So what makes her believe she’ll be the perfect assistant for Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau? Matchmaker Martha hopes the lively Irish girl will be a breath of fresh air for the business which has been her passion since her husband died at Passchendaele, but which is struggling to keep up with the turbulence of the 1930s. When lonely widower Fabian falls for April, Martha’s matchmaking skills are put to their greatest test. Is April as immune to romance as she claims? Is Martha’s interest in Fabian purely professional? Will there be enough happy endings to go round? Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is an uplifting romance about friendship, loneliness, and the unexpected places where we find fulfilment.

Celia: Having moved, as you have, from Young Adult to Adult fiction, I'd love to know - what precipitated the move?

Sheena: I’ve always intended to write for different audiences, and always wrote short historical fiction for adults alongside my children’s books. My most recent children’s books, a historical trilogy, seemed to be appreciated more by adults so I suppose it was a logical step. Some of my favourite writers, like K.M. Peyton and Noel Streatfeild – and indeed all three of you! – write for children and adults, so it never seemed odd.

Linda:   How and why did you decide to set the novel in a fictitious Yorkshire town rather than in your native Northern Ireland?

Sheena:  I always wanted an Irish main character, and much of the book’s heart and humour lies in the culture shock experienced by both April, my Northern Irish heroine, and the English people she works with. After three novels based on Irish history, I was keen to escape from religion, cultural identity and politics, and that just wouldn’t have been possible in an Irish or Northern Irish marriage bureau! So it was a very pragmatic decision. I love inventing towns, and Easterbridge, a small Yorkshire town, feels very real to me. I hope it convinces the reader! I did live in the north of England for six years and of course much of my cultural background is English. I wouldn’t set a book in a country I didn’t know well.

Adele: You have a gift of bringing the physical details of both place and people to life in a way which reminded me sometimes of one of my favourite writers, Dorothy Whipple. Were you influenced at all by the women writers of the 30s. Or by any other writers?

Sheena: That’s really observant of you, Adele, because not only is Dorothy Whipple one of my favourite writers, but I discovered her during the first lockdown, which is when I started to write Mrs Hart. In both cases, I wanted something essentially positive and escapist, but not too light. I was amazed that I hadn’t read Whipple before. I love how she brings you straight into the middle of a household and, with just a few details, makes you feel you know these people intimately. It’s honestly the greatest compliment that you found even a tiny spark of comparison! When I’m writing, I like to read novels written at the time I’m writing about, so yes, Whipple, E.M. Delafield, Noel Streatfield, Dorothy L. Sayers, as well as slightly later writers such as Barbara Pym are all favourites.

Adele:  I was surprised by the turn of events, (no spoilers) and thought the use of the double point of view worked so well. Did you ever consider a first person narrative? Do you have strong views about the First Person/Third Person debate?

Sheena:  I’ve written in both first and third, but on the whole I prefer third – I tend to write very close third, and I find it can do everything that first does, in terms of intimacy but without the self-consciousness of first. There are three POV characters, April, Martha and Fabian, with the women taking on most of the story, but I did want to include a male point of view too. It was really interesting to present the same characters from both inside and outside.

And I’m glad that you were surprised by the turn of events! I’ll say more about that below!

Linda:  In an interview you said that you see the book as 'feelgood feminism' (great term). Were there any points at which the political background threatened to darken the novel more than you intended?

Sheena: Yes! That was probably the biggest issue I had – I really wanted to maintain an uplifting tone, with warmth and a sense of community and, above all, hope, but I also wanted to explore some of the darker realities of the 1930s, in particular the rise of fascism, refugees and gender politics. Two things helped me. One was my experience of writing more overtly political novels – Name upon Name, Star by Star and Hope against Hope – but trying not to let the politics take over because the books were for a younger audience. The other was exploring how Call the Midwife, of which I am a big fan, negotiates that juxtaposition of serious social realism with sweetness and fun, without awkward tonal shifts. Because life actually is bittersweet.

Linda:  Basing the story around a marriage bureau is a clever idea, and April is a delightful character! Did you plan from the beginning how the story would end for her, or did that grow out of the writing? (I know ... difficult to answer that without spoilers ... )

Sheena:  It’s a hard question to answer, possibly because of spoilers, but essentially, yes, I always knew precisely the form of fulfilment that April would find for herself. It was also important for me to write about a variety of characters, main and secondary, for whom marriage was not the best outcome. After decades of singleness, I was married myself last year, aged 53, to a widower I’d known as a friend for almost thirty years. I don’t think I would have been attracted to this subject otherwise. I was the – I won’t say victim, but certainly object – of some very ham-fisted matchmaking efforts over the years, and I must admit I had great fun matching characters and futures!

Sheena with her husband Seamus

Celia:  I noticed that, through Felicity, you had some observations to make about people's perception of Children's writers. Did you find any significant differences in writing for different audiences?

Sheena:  I’ve definitely found it easier to write for adults – for the first time in a long time I’m writing for the reader I am now, rather than the reader I used to be. I feel there’s more space to explore the characters’ inner lives, and I suppose more freedom. But I always tried to write with depth and precision, and care for language, so in that sense it’s not very different. I had quite a lot of fun making one of my characters a 1930s children’s author. She complains about not being taken seriously as a ‘proper’ writer, and I have to say some of that did come from the heart!

Celia: Do you think you will return to Children's / YA fiction any time soon?

Sheena:  At the moment, my heart is definitely with writing for adults. I have so many ideas I’d like to explore. If I do write for children again, it would definitely be historical – that’s my favourite genre. I’ve never written a girls’ school story, which was the subject of my PhD thesis, so that’s something I might consider – but I’m 54, and to be honest I’m not really reading children’s books these days, so I think other people are better suited to writing them.

Adele:  Will there be a sequel? I would love one….

Sheena:  So would I! The publishers, HarperCollins Ireland, mentioned a sequel quite early in our relationship, though I don’t yet have a contract for one. I had planned not to write one without a contract, but like you – and I’m very happy to say, many readers – I was very keen to find out what happened next, and couldn’t resist starting …  It’s set in 1936, with old and new characters.

Thanks so much, Sheena, for answering our questions - we hope a great many readers will enjoy your novel as much as we did!

Lough Neagh

Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau is published by Harper Collins Ireland.

Guest review by Gill Lewis: DIARY OF A YOUNG NATURALIST by Dara McAnulty

 

"McAnulty has a fierce love of the natural world which shines brightly, and I, for one, am glad of its light."

Gill Lewis is a children's author, vet, wildlife enthusiast and tree house dweller, whose many books about animals and the natural world include Sky Dancer, Moon Bear and Run Wild. Three new books will be published in 2021: Willow Wildthing and the Shooting Star, illustrated by Rebecca Bagley (OUP), is the third book in the Willow Wildthing series about children finding wild space in the city; Swan Song (Barrington Stoke) is a story about teenage depression and the healing power of nature; and A Street Dog Named Pup (David Fickling Books, with a cover by Levi Pinfold) is about the incredible bond between human and dog, and one dog’s journey to find his boy.

See more on Gill's website.

I’ve been mulling for a while about writing this review. It’s hard to say what hasn’t already been said about this astonishing book and its equally astonishing author.

Quite deservedly, Diary of a Young Naturalist is the winner of the Wainwright Prize 2020, winner of Books are my Bag Readers Award for Non-Fiction, shortlisted for the Irish Post Award 2020 and finalist of Baillie Gifford Award 2020.

The book chronicles a year of McAnulty’s life between his 14th and 15th birthdays, a time between childhood and adulthood. We journey with him from the west of Northern Ireland to the east, from one spring to the next. He allows many of us a deeper understanding of autism, smashing stereotypes, as he shares the love and support from his family – mother, father, younger brother and sister. All but his father is autistic. Diary of a Young Naturalist is a profound account of a deep connection and love of the natural world and a desire to communicate with others to ensure protection of this planet we all call home.

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time but needed to find time and space to immerse myself. I’m glad I waited, because McAnulty’s words are ones to savour. He is truly a gifted writer. Poetic and lyrical, he is able to convey the deepest thoughts and emotions through words, yet without resorting to prolific superfluous prose.

McAnulty’s descriptions are powerful. They reawaken our senses to the world around us, a world we all too often shut out, wrapped up in our busy lives. He offers us sensory landscapes from seabird cries in the far distance and the way cloud shadows move across golden fields to then focus in self-absorption in the small details of watching a woodlouse crawl on our fingertip. Literature and folklore are woven throughout minutely observed science. We tread carefully amongst the bluebells for fear of the wrath of faeries and yet also learn about the slow growth of bluebells and their existence since the ice age. Science and art. Head and heart. Our human connection to the natural world.

Many people travel the world to see wildlife, but McAnulty shows us the world in a bucket. He describes a newly made bucket-pond as a cauldron of magic, and yet with growing distance from childhood has the self-awareness to realise that such childish joy is perceived as wrong, bad almost; “My mind skips, because, well, I’m too old for my body to be seen skipping into the house.” And yet, McAnulty’s words fizz and pop and sparkle with raw wonder, and one can’t help feeling that utter joy, a reawakening of senses long buried in childhood, a joy that should be a part of all our lives, however old we are.

Whilst the natural world offers great solace, delight and curiosity, the human world is one that is a hard path for McAnulty to navigate. The joy and wonder at the natural world are matched by the depths of anger and sorrow at its destruction at the hand of man. And through the course of the book we see that anger and passion become a powerful engine to communicate with others. McAnulty talks of the frustration of not being listened to, and being bullied at schools. Then we see the growing empowerment of having his voice heard. There is maturity beyond his years to recognise that some people pay lip service to him or want to use him for their own agendas. He acknowledges that he must be his own agent, and yet feels powerful and powerless at the same time. His sheer determination has traction. Where teachers once shrugged their shoulders at him and pupils laughed, a new school sees engaged teachers and pupils who seek change too.

I came away changed by reading McAnulty’s book – reawakened to childhood wonder, a renewed conscious desire to use all my senses to perceive the world around me, and to hold fast to the truth that we can all make a difference and change hearts and minds.

This is an important book for all to read. Deeply empathetic to all living things including his fellow humans, McAnulty has a fierce love of the natural world which shines brightly, and I, for one, am glad of its light. 

Diary of a Young Naturalist is published by Little Toller. Cover illustration and internal maps by Barry Falls   

See also: Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham, reviewed by Linda Newbery

Guest review by Leslie Wilson: MILKMAN by Anna

"Milkman is great literature - it's not just the people who are negotiating power-sharing in Northern Ireland who should read it. Everyone should. It tells us just how important peace is, in Northern Ireland and everywhere else."

Leslie Wilson is the author of two novels for adults and two for young adults. Last Train from Kummersdorf was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Branford Boase Award; Saving Rafael was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and Highly Commended for the Southern Schools Book Award. Both deal with Nazi Germany. Leslie Wilson is half German, was brought up bilingual, and has spent considerable amounts of time in Germany. She is currently working on a novel for adults, set in the very early nineteenth century.

'There was food and drink. The right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal. There were 'our shops' and 'their shops.' Placenames. What school you went to.. There was a person's appearance also, because it was believed you could tell 'their sort from over the road' from 'your sort this side of the road', by the very physical form of a person. There was choice of murals, of traditions, of newspapers, of anthems, of 'special days,' of passport...'

As a young married woman regularly visiting my husband's family in Belfast at the height of the Troubles, I could never wear my gold cross, and once, when I was packing, my husband told me not to take with me a very nice scarf I'd bought for myself, because it was green, yellow and white. Republican colours. Not only would this have annoyed the Unionist friends and relations, but it might have drawn unwelcome hostility in Protestant areas, which was a far worse prospect.

My Presbyterian mother-in-law was deeply disapproving when she found Irish cheddar in our fridge – as for butter, she might have bought Kerrygold if the alternative was no butter at all, but she'd have whipped the wrapper off and put it in the butter dish so it remained anonymous. Living in the middle-class suburb of Castlereagh, she was far removed from the embattled areas ruled by the paramilitaries, yet fear was a very real thing. If the policeman up the road, who taught my husband to drive, got a parcel in the post and didn't know who it was from, he took it down the garden to open it in case it was a bomb (how much good that would have done him, I don't know). If, at my mother-in-law's, there was a knock at the door after dark, there'd be apprehension, though she'd usually relax and say: 'It'll be Willie MacDowell.' That was the milkman, looking for his money.

There is such an ordinary milkman in this novel. 'Real Milkman' is outside the usual politics of the area – though he has been tarred and feathered by the paramilitaries. 'Real Milkman' won't have any part of the war; he sticks up for the underdogs of the Catholic community, rescuing the narrator a couple of times, and it becomes clear, after the Army shoot and wound him, that he's the focus of the erotic longings of half the middle-aged women in the area, including the narrator's mother. The man of the title, however, the probable-paramilitary, is just 'Milkman.' He delivers fear, but no milk.

The narrator (we never know her name or anyone else's) is a young woman; her habit of walking about the streets reading a book alienates her community, not because it's dangerous, but because she's become 'different', pretentious and 'haughty', as her oldest friend tells her. When 'Milkman' begins to stalk her, practically everyone (including her mother) refuses to believe that she's not his mistress. The novel charts her growing isolation, even from her 'almost-boyfriend', who is a boyfriend in any sense (she spends time with him, she spends the night at his house) except for commitment. She walks on shaky ground and 'almost-boyfriend,' though she's attached to him, and terrified by Milkman's threat that he'll put a bomb in his car, is another unstable paving slab.

The situation invades every aspect of her life, like chronic pain: 'Physically, too, it got tiring, all that distrust and push-pull, the sniper-open-fire, the countersniper return-fire, the sidestepping and twisting.. Just as with the milkman at the end of the day at home when I’d do my checking under the bed, behind the door, in the wardrobe and so on to see if he was in there, or under it, or behind it; checking curtains too, that they were firmly closed, that they weren't concealing him this side of the glass or that side of the glass, I realised things had reached the point where I was now checking to see if the community was concealing itself in those tucked-away places too.'

It's a story about Northern Ireland, or any other place of internecine conflict, but it's also a story about women, about the way they're always blamed, particularly if they don't conform. It did also make me think of the way older Protestant friends of my husband's family used to sit round saying: 'There'd never be all this trouble if they hadn't had the Civil Rights marches; that's what got it all started.' You could connect that to US complaints about Black Lives Matter. Never mind that the Catholic community in Northern Ireland had real, significant grievances, that Protestants as well as Catholics were aware of this and wanted them redressed, and that the resurgence of the IRA was due to attacks on Catholic communities and Catholics living in mixed communities ('Get out or be burned out). If you're an underdog, of whatever denomination, religion, ethnicity or gender, any protest will be seen as 'uppity' or evidence of madness, as the local feminists in 'Milkman' are seen, as the 'haughty' narrator is seen when she parades her unseemly erudition through the streets. As the suffragettes were seen, once upon a time.

That's not to say that Milkman is schematic; it's absolutely not. It's about one young woman, with a strong, compelling voice, and you want to know what becomes of her. Right from the beginning she had me hooked. And in spite of the not-naming of characters, they all walk off the page. It makes one realise that names are, after all, just labels, and it's as easy to call a young man 'almost-boyfriend' as it is to call him Sean. Its brilliance lies in its almost chatty stream of consciousness narrative style; you feel directly addressed by the narrator, confided in, drawn into her world and the repetitiousness demonstrates the ways in which our environments impact on us all - most painfully and bitterly when that environment is a traumatic one. Yet though the narrator is desperately hurt, terrified and beleaguered, she mitigates the darkness of the narrative with humour. The action takes place in '70s Belfast, yet it transcends any single situation, and powerfully demonstrates what long-term conflict does to the human psyche.

There's an episode where the members of a French class the narrator attends get angry because the teacher reads them a description of the sky. 'Why is he complicating things with fancy footwork, when all he needs to say is that the sky is blue?' The teacher gets them to go to the window and look at the sunset sky, which seriously discombobulates the narrator: 'For the first time I saw colours..blending and mixing, sliding and extending, new colours arriving, all colours combining, colours going on forever, except one which was missing, which was blue.'

You could take this as a description of the failure of so many of us to notice what's really around us, or as another case of hostility towards cultural preoccupations that seem 'haughty' to the majority, but it also describes the shut-down condition of people who live in fear, in a war situation: 'all that distrust and push-pull, the sniper-open-fire, the countersniper return-fire, the sidestepping and twisting -'

In the Northern Ireland of that day, ugly armed vehicles patrolled the roads on a regular basis, your bag was searched every time you went into a shop, there were Army checkpoints to search your vehicle. It was a state of guerilla war. Once, walking through apparently peaceful Newcastle with my husband, our young children, and a friend and his young children, we came upon a soldier in combat uniform, crouched behind a suburban hedge with a submachine gun. If you live in such a situation and you want to keep living normally, or pretend you're living normally, the imagination - 'the subversiveness of a sunset' - becomes a traitor, because it opens your eyes and life is only tolerable if you keep them at least half shut. I've seen that in refugees I've encountered, and in my own mother, who in her teens had dealt with multiple traumas from the war and the Nazi period by deciding to feel nothing at all, like the condition of numbness which gradually creeps over the narrator of Milkman.

Her world is more like my mother's experience than the middle-class world I encountered in 70s and 80s Northern Ireland; the community Anna Burns's narrator lives in is run as an almost totalitarian fascist state, with its informers (to the paramilitaries as well as to the police and the army), its deadly kangaroo courts and punishments. It's regularly invaded by the army; once they shoot all the neighbourhood dogs for giving warning when the patrols are coming; they shout sexualised abuse and threats at the women of the neighbourhood, as well as shooting both real Milkman and the eponymous Milkman of the title in the end (not a spoiler, Milkman's death comes in the first line of the novel). They shoot a lot of other people too. 'Before Milkman, they had shot a binman, two busdrivers, a road sweeper, a real milkman who was our milkman, then another person who didn't have any blue-collar or service-industry connections.. Then they played down the mistaken shootings while playing up the intended shooting.' An army media spokesperson talks about 'a job well done.'

If you don't find this believable, read about the recent Ballymurphy inquest, not much reported in a mainland obsessed with Brexit. Ten unarmed people were shot dead there in 1971, including a priest and a mother of eight children. A veteran has testified to the inquest that some of the Army were 'psychopaths' and 'out of control.' One soldier retrieved the skull of one of his victims and used it as an ash tray.

The Belfast Telegraph said recently that anyone participating in power-sharing talks in Northern Ireland ought to have read Milkman.. I read it while spending a week in Northern Ireland. We drove through the suburbs and the centre of the city, and you could tell the Catholic areas from the Protestant areas by the placards for the local elections. The only party that displayed placards everywhere was the Green Party. Other places were neatly divided into Sinn Fein or SDLP (Catholic), DUP or Official Unionist or Alliance (Protestant). There were the Protestant murals, there were the Catholic murals, one from the new IRA, proclaiming THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. The previous week, these boys had 'accidentally' murdered Lyra McKee in Derry.

Yet much has changed since the Good Friday agreement. (It's worrying that mainland politicians seem to think that agreement is past its date stamp and can be ditched, a vexatious block to their desired Brexit.) Northern Ireland has its troubles, but it's no longer at war. This is due to years of dedicated, courageous hard work by a multitude of, ordinary people, church men and women, politicians, skilled and dogged negotiators. That work mustn't be betrayed, lest the warfare return. Milkman is great literature, and it's not just the people who are negotiating power sharing in Northern Ireland who should read it. Everyone should read it, because it tells us just how important peace is, in Northern Ireland and everywhere else.

Milkman is published by Faber.

Guest review by Penny Dolan: THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty

Penny Dolan works as a children’s storyteller and writer. Her last novel for older children, A Boy Called Mouse, was nominated for the Young Quills Historical Fiction Award, and she is currently completing a companion book. She posts on the History Girls, on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure and also on The Cranky Laptop Writes, her personal blog. For more, see www.pennydolan.com

The Cold Cold Ground  is the first in a series of crime thrillers set in Northern Ireland during the 1980s. McKinty grew up in Carrickfergus, so his segregated estates, damaged buildings, industrial wastelands and lonely roads are bleakly believable. Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, his main character, even “lives” in the same council house that was McKinty’s home. Throughout the book, incidents remind the reader how angry and painful life was during the Troubles, less than thirty years ago.

The plot mixes moments of sharp fact and social realism with dramatic action. For example, so far, through the novel, Duffy has routinely checked under his car before driving away. Now, mid-story, he’s driving away from a gang of armed, drugged teenage thugs, and had no time to look.

“My knuckles were white. The downslope was coming up ... The reason the IRA use mercury tilt switches is that they only work when the mercury establishes contact on an incline or decline . . . thus it could stay safe under a car for days or even weeks ... As soon as it was driven, however, you’d eventually encounter a hill.”

Here Duffy investigates two cases: a weird double murder by a homophobic serial killer who is eager for publicity, and the apparent suicide of the ex-wife of a prisoner now on hunger strike in the Maze. As in all the Duffy books, these apparently unconnected crimes lead him deep into greater conspiracies.

Duffy is a great character: a university-educated Catholic working in the Protestant Royal Ulster Police Force. He is a compelling, cynical, street-wise hero who looks beyond accepted explanations for crimes, acts impulsively, and comes into conflict with criminals, corrupt officials and police budget restrictions. Nevertheless, among his team, there is a great sense of camaraderie: his officers, like the reader, recognise Duffy’s determination, care and courage.

Duffy’s life-style is, naturally, troublesome. He enjoys vodka gimlets in pint glasses, music and recreational drug use and is a soft touch for more than one friendly woman. His literary quotations and philosophical references can sometime feel overwritten but this is not a great problem when you can also enjoy the pace of the storytelling.

The plot’s complexity is sharpened by the everyday observations of the narrator. Through Duffy’s eyes, we experience the daily pressures of the province: the IRA bombing campaigns and road blocks; the ordinary lives worn down by riots and strikes, the antagonism between police and the British army. We see how, in a time of unemployment, both factions keep “their” local economy running through organised drug-running, EU meat parcels handed out to supporters or protection rackets.

McKinty also points out the growing media indifference: Duffy, searching the papers for important item about Northern Ireland, notes that the editions are filled with Lady Di’s wedding plans and the Yorkshire Ripper. Items about Northern Ireland are, usually, hidden several pages down, reminding the reader that media “weariness” with long-term problems is an ongoing issue.

While McKinty’s fiction seems very realistic, his story edges into dramatically complex areas. His plots often include small “walk-on parts” for real-life characters. For example, within The Cold Cold Ground  Duffy phones and meets up with Gerry Adams, while another character echoes the infamous IRA informer Stakeknife. Such real-or-not moments made me shiver a little, partly for the well-being of the author, who now lives in Australia.

As for the writing, The Cold Cold Ground  is a fast-paced crime-noir thriller: a genre rather than a literary novel. The prose contains tough language, violent sequences, sex scenes and dangerous driving. Even so, McKinty’s writing has a way of slipping between staccato sentences and lyrical description. Here’s his opening passage:

“The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife. And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain.”

I read about McKinty’s Duffy series last year. Bookwitch, on her well-established blog, was sharing her delight about the forthcoming Duffy title. Thank you, Bookwitch! Being curious, I ordered The Cold Cold Ground  from my local bookshop, enjoyed it tremendously and have now finished McKinty’s sixth and possibly last Duffy title.

Finally, I have a too-topical reason for choosing The Cold Cold Ground.  The book may be gritty escapism but it is impossible to read this story, or the series, without worries about Brexit, the current Irish border and the uneasy political situation creeping into the back of one’s mind. The dark world shown within McKinty’s thrillers really makes one hope that the Irish Peace Process - and the people either side of that border – will not be ignored or forgotten by those in power now.

The Cold Cold Ground is published by Serpent's Tail.