The Wild Colonial Boy

After fifteen years of violence, a tense calm pervades Northern Ireland, soon to be broken by Jimmy Coogan, an IRA veteran who seeks to restore the Movement to its violent tradition.A true believer, as devious as he is dangerous, Jimmy has stolen ten pounds of plastic explosive, intending to destroy the parliamentary ambitions of the IRA leadership.Into Jimmy's turbulent world come two young Americans: Brian, vain, ironic, but well-meaning; and Clare, a beautiful, earnest college student on her junior year abroad.In Ireland on a seemingly harmless errand for his Irish Republican family in Detroit, Brian is recruited to Jimmy's bloody mission by his cousin Maire, Coogan's passionate and sharp-tongued wife.Only half-aware of each other's motives, Brian and Clare, Jimmy and Maire are all drawn into the deadly and unforgiving labyrinth of modern terrorism, borne inexorably toward a horrific and fatal climax.A love story as well as a thriller, James Hynes's first novel is a page-turning tale of political and personal intrigue in the grand tradition, a classic story of commitment, violence, and betrayal.


Genre: Literary Fiction