Reviews

• 元殺し屋の悲しみ

  Gerry Feganは元ＩＲＡ兵士、誰もが恐れる殺し屋だった。時代は変わり、酒びたりの日々を送るFeganは、自分が殺した12人の幽霊に取りつかれ、彼らに命ぜられるままに、殺人を指示した元ボスたちを次々と殺していく。 残酷な暴力、血まみれの殺人あり、死ぬまで自分を許さなかった母親との悲しい思い出、淡い恋、幼い少女との心のふれあいありと、バランスの取れた内容になっている。 Feganが幽霊に命乞いをする場面にはがっかりしたが、ある＜奇跡＞を起こすためには必要なものだったのだろう。スリラー、ミステリーに分類されているものの、実際には人の心、罪悪感を扱った小説。ラストシーンはさわやかなので、安心して読んでほしい。

• Bought this book on a whim after seeing it on a list of lesser known thrillers and wow. Started reading it on the plane ride home from a vacation and could not put it down! Well written, strong characters, a haunting plot and it inspired me to read up on the 'Troubles' of North Ireland as well. I've ordered the next book in this authors series and will dive into that as well! Well worth the read if you like well written, fast paced thrillers!

• "The Ghosts of Belfast" is thriller fiction, bordering on horror. It is the most violent novel I’ve ever read. It’s set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the first years of this century, several decades after the Troubles of the 1970s and ‘80s, and while that era of violence isn’t even a memory to most of Belfast’s younger residents, its repercussions are still being actively felt. The central character is Gerry Fegan, a Catholic/nationalist man in his 40s who was trained by the IRA from his early teens as a soldier and, because of his strength, courage, and intelligence, was used as a killer until in his 20s he was caught and held as a political prisoner. Furloughed from prison to attend his mother’s funeral, he was given one more assignment – to plant a bomb in a butcher shop whose upper rooms were being used as a meeting place by the opposition. By accident, the bomb exploded too soon and killed three unintended victims, the butcher, a young woman, and her baby. Fegan, apparently hardened by all his experience, served out his remaining time. But now, years later, words spoken to him by the mother of a young man whose death he was involved in, and whose body was never found, have unlocked his guilt, and he is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. The ghosts that haunt Fegan have a specific agenda. They want him to kill the individuals who “forced” him to cause their deaths. Gerry had done the things he did not for personal gain but because he’d been ordered to do them, and in fact had been trained to believe he was doing the right things. Pitted against his training was his mother’s influence, but that hadn’t been strong enough to overcome the other. His murders were committed for political reasons – reasons he came to realize even as he committed them were not legitimate even in the context they were presented, but were instead meant to protect and increase the power of his superiors. Now he can no longer hide this realization from himself. In a nutshell, the novel’s plot follows Gerry’s efforts to do what his ghosts demand and the turmoil among his old associates and others that results from his efforts. I’m by no means an expert in or scholar of recent Irish history, and much of what goes on in the book might be expected to confuse me as a reader to the point I wouldn’t understand any of it and would give up trying. Surprisingly, this didn’t actually bother me. Neville navigates through this material so skillfully and so successfully that our focus and our sympathies remain on and with Gerry Fegan. The other characters, with their various agendas and their own problems, are so well portrayed that we not only see them as human beings but also see the multiple “sides” of the situation that they represent. Knowing something about the history and setting can’t hurt, but we can learn what we need to know through the story itself. Gerry’s ghosts are metaphors in a couple of ways: they are metaphors for his feelings of guilt, and to those who begin to observe his behavior – he sees and talks to people who aren’t visible – this is all they are. It’s supposed that he has become insane. In the larger context of the book, his ghosts are also metaphors for people and beliefs and tactics that were once useful and are now obstructive. At one point, one of the characters begins to realize that “…the ghosts [of the old ways have] come to haunt the political process.” But the ghosts are also real. I won't say how that's revealed, but when it is, we’re forced to see Gerry Fegan for who he really is, a man who’s been manipulated by history and politics and power and the ghosts themselves to commit acts that he himself, as a basically good person, cannot condone. Gerry’s ghosts never speak; they only point mutely at those on whom they want Gerry to take revenge. Only in the last sentence of the book does the last remaining ghost say a word.

• I'm a big fan of the thriller genre but approached this book with some trepidation. I hail from Northern Ireland and my entire childhood was dominated by 'The Troubles'. Most 'Troubles' fiction that I have read has made me cringe and I've never greatly bought into the whole concept of the supernatural - so, on the face of it, The Ghosts of Belfast (sold as The Twelve in the UK) should have been a resounding no-no. The reality turned out to be completely the opposite. Once I started this book, I could not put it down and since finishing it, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Three things about it keep striking me - the normally untold truths of Northern Ireland politics were conveyed so well; I can not recall a work of fiction that has manifest difficult truths so clearly and so compellingly. The supernatural element of the novel was seamless - partly because the story gave the reader reasons to believe the protagonist (a former IRA killer) was experiencing psychosis but also because the portrayal of the ghosts was so simple (and therefore effective), their desires so understandable and ultimately because of the reader's desire for the protagonist to try and redeem himself through revenge (revenge mediated and directed by the ghosts). Finally, the quality of the writing was stunning. Stuart Neville has not only written an utterly gripping story, he has written it with beautiful craftsmanship. This is the best novel I have read in a long, long time.

• Very good, I did grow up in Ireland in the 70's and this brought back so many memories.

• There's a lot of things that can draw you into a book. Sometimes it's the author; sometimes it's the plot description; sometimes, it's something as simple as an intriguing cover or title that draws you in. In the case of The Ghosts of Belfast, it was the pull quotes. More specifically, it was the authors of two of those quotes, each of whom raved about the book, calling it an incredible debut, and a great - and unsettling - piece of crime fiction. Those two authors? James Ellroy and John Connolly, two men who rank among the finest craftsmen working in the genre today. So when you get their praises, you've got my attention. But in a way, those two names can tell you everything you need to know about this book. The Ghosts of Belfast (originally titled The Twelve) focuses on former (more or less) IRA hitman Gerry Fegan, a man haunted - perhaps literally - by his crimes. Neville's novel is set after the worst of The Troubles, as Ireland works on an unsteady path to peace - a path that means men like Fegan are out of their place and time. As the novel opens, Fegan is drinking - something he does quite often these days - and trying to ignore the twelve spectral visions which haunt him day and night. Maybe they're only in his head; maybe they're real. But whatever the case, each represents someone he's killed. But when Fegan kills a man to appease one of the visions, and the vision disappears, he becomes a man on a new mission - one of vengeance. The connection to John Connolly seems obvious for anyone who's read the Parker series. A hint of the supernatural, dark men with dark motives, a penchant for violence, and, of course, the Irish worldview that permeates the book. And yet, to focus too much on the ghosts - which may or may not exist - is to miss the point of the book. Indeed, even though both titles the book has had imply that the book centers on these figures, instead, this is a novel about guilt, and violence, and shame. It's a book that's about the scars left behind in the wake of the Troubles, yes, but also the scars left behind by the men who fought for their independence, and who've done horrific, brutal things in the name of that fight. Which brings us to the Ellroy connection. The men of Ghosts of Belfast are fighters. They're revolutionaries, freedom fighters - and, with all the emotional heft that comes with the word, "terrorists." And even the closest thing we get to a hero turns out to be a deeply broken one, a man who may have lost any sense of a moral compass in an effort to stay alive and stay safe. In other words, they're the exact sorts of men that Ellroy writes about: men capable of anything, as long as the cause - or the money - is right. And as the book's focus widens beyond the mission of Gerry Fegan, we see that the book is about more than one man's guilt; it's about the uneasy new status of Ireland, the complex new morality and balance that's giving Ireland a new lease on life. The Ghosts of Belfast is a complex novel, and not an easy one to pigeonhole. In some ways, it's a bleak revenge novel; at other times, it's a complex, nuanced look at a politically difficult period in Ireland's evolution. Sometimes, it's a sprawling look at corruption and crime; other times, it's a painful dissection of guilt and violence. Sometimes, it's a book about what it takes - and what it's worth - to maintain peace. And other times, it's simply about brutality and what men do to each other in the name of the greater good. All of that makes it a difficult book to describe, and hard to figure out sometimes. And yet, it's also that same complexity that makes it so rewarding, and so unlike much else out there. To read Ghosts of Belfast is to dip your toes into a very different world, one that's utterly foreign to many Americans, and one where lines are far blurrier. And if the book sometimes feels uneven, or full of odd juxtapositions, or a bit bumpy...that's okay. Because there's something refreshing about a book that feels this ambitious and different, and when it works, it really, really works.

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