“If you love a mystery, then you’ll devour [Northern Spy] . . . I loved this thrill ride of a book.”—Reese Witherspoon
“A chilling, gorgeously written tale…Berry keeps the tension almost unbearably high.” –The New York Times Book Review
The acclaimed author of Under the Harrow and A Double Life returns with her most riveting novel to date: the story of two sisters who become entangled with the IRA
A
producer at the BBC and mother to a new baby, Tessa is at work in
Belfast one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA
may have gone underground in the two decades since the Good Friday
Agreement, but they never really went away, and lately bomb threats,
security checkpoints, and helicopters floating ominously over the city
have become features of everyday life. As the news reporter requests the
public's help in locating those responsible for the robbery, security
footage reveals Tessa's sister, Marian, pulling a black ski mask over
her face.
The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but
Tessa is convinced she must have been abducted or coerced; the sisters
have always opposed the violence enacted in the name of uniting Ireland.
And besides, Marian is vacationing on the north coast. Tessa just spoke
to her yesterday.
When the truth about Marian comes to light,
Tessa is faced with impossible choices that will test the limits of her
ideals, the bonds of her family, her notions of right and wrong, and her
identity as a sister and a mother. Walking an increasingly perilous
road, she wants nothing more than to protect the one person she loves
more fiercely than her sister: her infant son, Finn.
Riveting, atmospheric, and exquisitely written, Northern Spy is
at once a heart-pounding story of the contemporary IRA and a moving
portrait of sister- and motherhood, and of life in a deeply divided
society.
