Stuart Evers

I wrote this book over a period of almost three years. It only took about six months to do the actual writing - the rest of the time was spent on research. Throughout I have tried to make the book as realistic as possible and I have always thought that the key to achieving this is detailed research.

The book is set between the IRA ceasefires in 1997. The central figure is a field officer working for the Irish Intelligence Service. Before I started the book it struck me as odd that nobody had ever written (to the best of my knowledge) a book about such a character – which is doubly odd when one considers the amount of books, TV series and movies about the IRA and Northern Ireland as a whole.

Of course, one of the reasons for this is the fact that the Irish Secret Service is actually a secret secret-service and operates in almost complete vacuum. Indeed, it was only in the last decade or so that the Irish government actually admitted that such an organisation existed (I believe someone actually spotted during a debate on the budget one year when its costs appeared a seperate line in the accounts for the first time).

As you might imagine, this made researching the book extremely difficult – and you now get some insight into why the research took so long. However, while not everything is 100% accurate, I do feel the reader will have a very good insight into how this organisation operates, not to mention the complex and somewhat schizophrenic nature of Irish patriotism and nationalism (for example, the IRA was officially an enemy of the Irish state yet its political wing, Sinn Fein, stood for election within that state!)

However, I always wanted this to be a secondary objective. My primary objective was to create a central character that was a real portrayal of such an intelligence officer. In other words I wanted to create a realistic spy. The central character is not a good-guy, nor is he a bad-guy – he is a mixture of both. He is ruthless, violent and paranoid and he is also emotionally immature, unable to express himself at he wishes and is uncomfortable in intimate situations – and he is socially dysfunctional. In other words, he is the result of what he does for a living...he is no James Bond, he is a complex mix of things good and bad.

Of course, with all that said, this is a work of fiction and it is work of fiction that is meant to entertain - so in all I hope the story line keeps you interested and turning the pages...after all, that should be the objective of every book and every author!

I hope that you will take the time to download this book and I equally hope you will enjoy reading it. And of course, you are welcome to submit a review or contact me with any questions or comments – I’ll do my very best to reply to you.

Cheers,

Stuart