Acts of Allegiance

Longlisted for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award A propulsive tale of espionage, betrayal, loyalty, and love, set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland–for readers of The Goldfinch and classic le Carre.

Marty Ransom, son of the Captain and heir to a hilltop estate near Waterford in independent Ireland, lives a comfortable, boring life with his tennis-playing, Anglican wife, Sugar, and a job in the Department of External Affairs. Among their closest friends are an Anglo-Irish couple, a banker who was Sugar’s childhood flame and his alluring diplomat wife, Alison. But Marty is a man divided. While his father fought with the British Army and found respectability in marriage, Marty’s closest childhood friend was his cousin Iggy, the rebel son of a working-class Irish patriot whose gift for tinkering with radio parts has grown into a bomb maker’s skill.

When Marty is lured into keeping tabs on the growing IRA activities in Ireland’s troubled North, he finds himself walking a tightrope of conflicting yearnings and loyalties, balancing between nations, lovers, and parts of his own past, never knowing whom he can trust. But after Bloody Sunday escalates the violence and the British mount a desperate operation to take out a notorious IRA bomber, he must choose, and risk putting everything he loves most–his wife and young family–as well as his own life, at risk.