‘Across the Line’ - the latest book from Garbhan Downey

THE legendary and still lamented former Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly once said: “Football is not a matter of life and death, it is much more important than that.”

However in the case of the latest work of author Garbhan Downey football actually does become a matter of life and death, threatens the stability of Anglo-Irish relations, and heading for two decades after Northern Ireland’s paramilitary cessations of violence sees the supposedly decommissioned fuse of inter-communal warfare begin to hiss and fizz once more.

The old adage of ‘writing about what you know’ always rings true for a reason - because it actually is true and Garbhan Downey knows and loves both football and politics. In these islands there is rarely a more inflammatory mixture, especially when money is at stake.

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It is for this reason that his latest work, Across the Line, manages to seamlessly mingle soccer, Machiavellian politics of the highest order, an utterly Northern Irish blasé attitude towards criminality and general skulduggery in a highly comedic way though it is thoroughly threaded through with an ever present menacing violence.

The sixth in Garbhan Downey’s politically based novels, Across the Line centres on the familiar characters of Harry Hurley, leading republican, and his loyalist counterpart and nemesis Vic McCormick. Through a chance encounter it transpires that McCormick’s daughter Gigi ends up spliced to Harry’s nephew Diarmuid Dunne - a top class footballer.

In normal circumstances it would be expected that such new found family ties would at least superficially ease tensions - but that of course would be too much to ask and these are not normal circumstances, nor indeed normal people.

Since the guns fell silent in Northern Ireland some 15 years earlier both former paramilitary leaders have grown accustomed to a lavish lifestyle - the ‘prize’ of peace, never mind the price of peace.

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But, bored in the present and hankering for the past, Hurley can no longer resist the chance to get one over on his old enemy.

What follows, without giving too much away, is a wry, fast paced and highly clever book that has more twists and turns than an unapproved road.

The plot centres on a bet that pokes huge fun at the separateness of the political and sporting institutions north and south of the border and what unfolds is a litany of murder, bombings and an attempt to blackmail the British Prime Minister into redrawing the Northern Irish border - and all for the sake of a bet on a football game.

Downey’s career as a reporter first at the Londonderry Sentinel, then the Irish News, as editor with the Derry News and a lengthy stint in a senior position at the BBC has undoubtedly furbished him with a lifetime’s worth of stories that could never make the headlines for many legal reasons. However, the passage of time and a gift for intricate characterisation has enabled the author to eventually write these escapades down without fear of any sort of retribution, although it is reasonable to surmise that out there somewhere there are sweaty palms and itchy collar lines still when word of Garbhan Downey’s latest work begins to surface!

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Across the Line maintains with consummate ease the high standard of plot intrigue, humour and innate insight into the political scene captured in the author’s previous books in this genre.

Across the Line is available from all local book stores priced £9.99 or from the Guildhall Press website www.ghpress.com, where all of Downey’s other works can also be found.

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