{"id":5775,"date":"2009-09-28T15:29:26","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T19:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5775"},"modified":"2009-09-28T15:30:21","modified_gmt":"2009-09-28T19:30:21","slug":"review-stuart-nevilles-the-twelve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/review-stuart-nevilles-the-twelve\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Stuart Neville’s The Twelve<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My review<\/a> of this new thriller is up, over at The Book Book.<\/p>\n

(Technically, it’s only newish<\/em>; it came out in the UK several months ago. However, it’s slated for publication here in the US on October 1, under the title The Ghosts of Belfast<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Capsule review: an excellent story, told in what is — for another aspiring new author — an embarrassingly expert manner. I have no idea how much this book resembles the form in which he submitted it, but on its evidence Stuart Neville has a long successful career ahead of him.<\/p>\n

The book’s setting: contemporary Northern Ireland. On the surface, the IRA is going through all the motions of becoming a respectable, merely political force. But this innocent exterior is threatened by certain old-line forces which long for the days when an opponent could simply be threatened or dispatched outright.<\/p>\n

Into this mix comes one Gerry Fegan, a long-time IRA “hard man” — what we might think of here as a goodfella, of the particularly brutal sort — recently released from prison. He’s not really interested in returning to his old ways, and in fact has twelve very good reasons to put them behind: the ghosts of those he has killed, now demanding payment from Fegan. Blood<\/em> payment — the blood of those who condemned the twelve to death…<\/p>\n

I really liked The Twelve<\/em>. The supernatural angle isn’t heavy-handed; these ghosts appear to no one but Fegan, and intervene in no way directly. No floating candlesticks, no banging doors. But Neville has made them real to Fegan — oh boy are they real to him.<\/p>\n

And as a thriller it’s got everything I’d look for: not mere action (though there’s plenty of that) and not mere suspense (ditto), but plenty of heart<\/em> as well.<\/p>\n

__________________<\/p>\n

P.S. Stuart Neville is a blogger<\/a> and sometime commenter on other popular writerly blogs, like Moonrat’<\/a>s and Nathan Branford<\/a>‘s places. Other long-time denizens of those places have known him for years, some even having read and\/or critiqued early drafts of his book. I myself don’t “know” him in any way, although I have posted maybe two or three comments to his blog in the year since I encountered him as his online persona named “Conduit.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My review of this new thriller is up, over at The Book Book. (Technically, it’s only newish; it came out in the UK several months ago. However, it’s slated for publication here in the US on October 1, under the title The Ghosts of Belfast.) Capsule review: an excellent story, told in what is — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,266],"tags":[162,265,1416],"class_list":{"0":"post-5775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-reading","7":"category-book-reviews-writing_cat","8":"tag-stuart-neville","9":"tag-the-book-book","10":"tag-the-twelve","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1v9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5775"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5781,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5775\/revisions\/5781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}