Dimensions
155 x 233 x 28mm
Dublin 1940. An IRA attempt to capture the British diplomatic bag on its way from Ireland to England leaves two Guards dead on the streets of Dublin. Two days later a pitched battle between warring gangs erupts at one of Ireland's biggest race meetings. On Ireland's east coast the cremated bodies of a wealthy family of five are found in their shuttered, burned-out villa.
Connections between these events become clear to Detective Inspector Stefan Gillespie when he is despatched from Special Branch to investigate the seaside deaths, but he is soon treading on the toes of Ireland's burgeoning Intelligence industry - Irish, British and German, all playing against each other, all watching each other, and all plagued by rogue operators they can't quite control, as the certainty grows that Hitler is about to invade England.
Meanwhile, in Berlin, a young Irish woman has been arrested for the murder of the German officer who was her lover. She faces a brutal execution by guillotine. The Irish ambassador can do nothing to help her, even though he is convinced the police know she is innocent. But when Stefan Gillespie is sent to Berlin, carrying new code books for the beleaguered embassy, there is an abrupt change of tune at police headquarters in the Alexanderplatz. The police now believe someone else in Berlin's tiny Irish community murdered the German officer, and they want Stefan to help them find the killer. But he soon discovers he is really working with the Gestapo, and they are not looking for a murderer at all . . .
The journey home will turn into a dangerous pursuit, where no one can be trusted and the information he carries puts his life at risk.
Back in Ireland Stefan walks into another web of deceit, where truth is neither welcome nor convenient. The strangely connected events he was investigating before he went to Germany, now coloured by what he discovered there, have become 'unconnected'. No one wants them to be connected again, even if it means an innocent man hangs . . .
