Most spy stories and thrillers involve men, so Flynn Berry’s Northern Spy is immediately a welcome addition to the genre. The protagonist is Tessa, a Belfast native with a beloved sister called Marian, and the men in this novel appear as a backdrop to the main story, quite the reverse of the usual trope.
Quite apart from the gender of the main characters, this is a distinctly female-centric novel. When was the last time you came across a thriller that involved a baby, not just as a prop, but a realistic baby whose personality, moods, growth spurts, and childcare requirements actually drive the behaviour and the actions of the protagonist? (This, of course, may turn off admirers of the classic spy novels)
Tessa is a divorced mother with a six-month-old child, Finn. She works at the BBC in Belfast, and patches together her life with a daycare, occasional help from her mother, a neighbour with whom she trades babysitting, and a teenage babysitter. Her sister Marian is a paramedic. One day, Tessa sees Marian live on screen, involved in an IRA robbery.
She is standing with two men outside a petrol station, by a row of fuel pumps.
“The police are appealing for witnesses after an armed robbery in Templepatrick”.
When [Marian] straightens, she’s wearing a black ski mask.
But..but…Tessa grabs at any alternative explanation — was Marian coerced into the robbery like Patty Hearst? The local police provide incontrovertible evidence that Marian indeed has been part of the IRA for years. And a few weeks later, Marian, on the run and in hiding, confirms this directly to Tessa.
Tessa has always been religiously agnostic (in a way that to me, seems more American than Irish), and is no fan of the IRA. Yet, slowly but inevitably, she is drawn into their machinations: first passing on information to Marian’s handler Eamonn, then collecting license plate number of police cars for potential IRA targets, a step deeper each time. Why does she do it?
Seamus started Marian with these small errands or favours, and I hate to say it, but I understand now why it worked. It does make you feel special.
At work last week, our interview guest asked me to bring him a coffee, instead of asking our runner. A group of teenagers tried to essentially walk through my on the pavement. The bus ran late. Finn refused to eat any of the food I’d carefully prepared for him. My point is, I don’t often feel powerful of a day. Most people don’t.
Except now I do.
At other points, her motivation is to spare other children like her own from terrorism, from losing their parents, from being collaterally injured in bombings, and so that they can grow up in a more peaceful environment. It’s not totally convincing; I found Marian’s explanation more believable:
Once you’ve done something terrible, you have to keep going, you have to win, or else the terrible thing was for nothing.
This is a slow-moving book for a thriller, but the pace seems entirely appropriate to the pace of life for Tessa and her baby: slow, thoughtful periods followed by brisk activity. The plot can be shaky: would an experienced IRA team really allow themselves to be captured on TV without masks? Would the IRA immediately recruit the sister of a watched fugitive? Would Eamonn tell her so much about himself on a first meeting? (On the other hand, any reader of spy novels would wonder if all this information is accurate or just part of a cover story!)
One of the pleasures of an Irish novel is always, for me, the dialogue. In this book, the Irishness is somewhat intermittent. Tessa and Marian endlessly refer to their mother as ‘mam’. Their mam says ‘Catch yourself on’ more than once. They get ‘trolleyed’ when they drink. I didn’t catch any major British or Americanisms, but compared to other Irish novels, the dialogue here seems somewhat blandly generic most of the time.
‘How was your day? What did you do?’
‘Oh, you know, this and that.’
‘I haven’t forgiven you. Whatever you’re doing now doesn’t make up for it.’
‘They need a peace deal, or they’re going to get themselves killed.’
There is a nice plot twist reminiscent of The Spy who Came in from the Cold, but unlike that novel with its layers of brilliantly confusing secrecy, in this book it is explained quite directly by a helpful detective.
Historically, this is a puzzling book, which might be due to my limited knowledge of the complicated history of northern Ireland.
My sister and I were born near the end of the Troubles. We were children in 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed.
Although set in the 2010s, it seems as though the IRA activity is intense and continuous. Everyone is tense, dropping to the ground if a car backfires, or panicking when a torch shines in the field at night. It seems too intense for the period, and the book might have seemed more realistic if it had been set two decades earlier. The Troubles are described as a straight Catholic-Protestant conflict.
Most Catholics still wanted a united Ireland, most Protestants wanted to remain part of the UK.
There’s little nuance here in the historical exposition. And while the individual IRA characters are relatively normal, as a group they are cold and brutal, willing to kill any number of civilians for their vision. It is clear that the author is no fan of the IRA, but that dislike translated into the book doesn’t seem quite right for Catholic Tessa, born and bred in Belfast. For an excellent history of the IRA, see Keefe’s Say Nothing.
So it’s not perfect, but it’s still a pretty nice read, and it’s fun to see a spy whose major motivation is the world her child will grow up in.
really enjoyed the elements you picked out in this review!