The Ghosts of Belfast

By: Stuart Neville

Narrated by: Gerard Doyle

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Fegan has been a "hard man" - an IRA killer in Northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by 12 ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he's going to have to kill the men who gave him orders.

As he's working his way down the list, he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too. Now he has given Fate - and his quarry - a hostage. Is this Fegan's ultimate mistake?

©2009 Stuart Neville (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Mystery / Thriller, 2010
• Notable Crime Books of 2009 (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times)
• The Year’s Most Mesmerizing Mysteries (Maureen Corrigan, NPR)

"Stuart Neville's debut novel about the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland is harsh, brutal, and unrelentingly grim. With spare, crisp dialogue, and a gift for turning an Irish phrase, Neville plants himself firmly in Adrian McKinty territory. And who better to narrate than Gerard Doyle? Doyle gets it—and so do we. His whine; his growl; his rough yet sensitive, always-passionate performance gives everything a listener could want from an audiobook." ( AudioFile)

"With this stunning debut, Neville joins a select group of Irish writers, including Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, and Adrian McKinty, who have reinvigorated the noir tradition with a Celtic edge." ( Publishers Weekly)

what a surprise

this book has an original storyline that takes you off the beaten path. It's full of twists and turns and it's fast pace keeps you entertained. well done

Absolutely Brilliant

I usually listen to things like The Hunger Games or Shadowhunters so this book is completely different. Loved the characters, the descriptions of the fighting etc was excellent. The narrator did a great job with all the accents too. Well worth the read/listen.

Best Premise. Nonstop action!!

Loved it! great set up, great character development - nonstop, thundering plot. great, just great!! Super score for Neville.

Great Book, Excellent NArrator

I have to start by saying Gerard Doyle is an excellent narrator. The Ghosts of Belfast is a well written book that never slows down.

Tragic, Violent, Exciting

You are pulled into the main character's mind and carry with you a feeling of wanting to save him or hoping he will save himself in a tumultuous Ireland. Wow...a good read.

'THE TROUBLES !'

This is a really terrific novel A taut, brutal view at the conflict in Northern Ireland' looking at the 'war' from every perspective be it the British Government, The IRA ( soldiers and political leadership), ordinary people etc etc. Gerard Doyle does a great job capturing the intensity and undercurrent of tremendous tension weaving around Fegan and his conscience. A reminder once again of what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings. What a fabulous read!

Fantastic listen

A must listen for anyone who has even a passing interest in the Northern Ireland troubles, extremely well crafted and with just the right element of humour.

A Hard Man as the Real Deal

Any additional comments?

At one point, our sort-of heroine, Marie McKenna, asks our hero (as much a hero an emotionally ill serial killer can be), Gerry Fegan, “You can’t choose the places you don’t belong, but what if the places you don’t belong are only ones left to you?”

It’s a great question, put in memorable noir elegance, and much of this novel sets out to answer it. Gerry is haunted, literally, by the ghosts of the people he killed when he was one of the IRA’s top hard men, and he understands them as demanding that he put to death the men responsible.

Most of this is as fine an example of the genre as you’ll get. Neville writes with consistent skill, and he has a gift for alternating scenes of riveting violence with meditations on things as simple as the work of sanding down a piece of wood. I’m new to his work, but I’m ready to declare him the real thing – someone who can stand up to, say, Ken Bruen, with whom he is often compared.

There are some limits brought on by the genre, though. Above all, I’m never satisfied with Marie’s answer for staying in Belfast. A point is a point, but when they’re threatening your daughter and they’re willing to pay your way somewhere else, why stick around? She may not belong in Belfast, and that may be part of the legitimate local critique of the work. (That is, Belfast’s recent generations have driven away much of what might be “the good.”) But I can’t help feeling she stays more for the needs of the story than in keeping with the character Neville draws for her.

The end of this is a satisfying showdown, but the very end troubles me. I’d give a spoiler alert, but the fact that this is the first novel in a series does that for me: Fegan is a powerful character, and he bears the weight of his ghosts with a dignity (and palpable insanity) that makes him memorable. The trouble is, he’s also necessarily a doomed one. He should not survive this, yet he does, and apparently he goes on to multiple further adventures. That’s a shame. Neville has invented someone remarkable at the heart of this book. I wish he’d trusted himself to invent someone else for another one rather than violating the emotional premise of this one.

Violent but compelling

This was an impulse buy for me, but one I wouldn't change. You might like to know that the story is sadly violent and full of bad language. If those things bother you, you might consider something else. Even though I don't care for cursing and violence in my reading, I was so drawn to the character and his sad guilt and his attempts to balance the books. I really didn't know much about the Irish troubles, but had to go look some of it up. The story stays with me even weeks later. Narrator was great.

Great book but only if...

you can handle some pretty heavy parts such as murder, f-bombs, many different types of -isms etc. The narrator has a wonderful Irish brogue that truly helps bring the many different characters to life. This is essentially a love story with a mystery thrown in. The ghosts are not spooky but a wonderfully scary character(s) element throughout.