A border town in Northern Ireland is riven by political intrigue, personal rivalries and deep-seated betrayals in Austin Duffy’s CROSS, a powerful, poetic thriller about the costs and consequences of political violence.

Duffy’s US debut is set in 1994 during the waning days of the Troubles. The novel begins with an aging IRA operative with a talent for reconnaissance masterminding a hit on an off-duty police officer (“an instrument of our oppression lasting these eight hundred years and counting”). Francie Begley is a true believer in the republican cause, the kind of man who knows he can’t spare a thought for the dead man’s wife and children because he and his comrades are engaged in a war against a state that is “apartheid to its bones and discriminatory from the day of its inception.” But Francie’s dispassionate calculus is thrown out of whack by a series of unexpected yet seemingly inevitable developments.

"...a powerful, poetic thriller about the costs and consequences of political violence.... Duffy’s tense, brutal story unspools in the lyrical voice of an omniscient narrator..."

First is the drama playing out in the Cross town square. The Widow Donnelly is the dissolute mother of an exiled young man accused of being a “tout,” or informer to the British. She’s gone on an uncomfortably public hunger strike to protest his banishment, thus “bringing shame on herself and shame on the people of Cross.” Normally, the bedraggled widow would be shunned and ignored. But now that the wheels of the peace process are turning, ambitious Sinn Féin politician Máirtín O’Cuilleanáin (aka the M.O.C.) wants the boy and his mother reunited. Much to the disappointment of the cause’s foot soldiers, the M.O.C. specifically bans the kind of retributive violence that would make the republican forces “look like goons” in front of the Americans.

As the peace process inches forward, tensions flare among the restless paramilitaries. When more operations go south, rumors swirl that someone in the organization is an informer. Meanwhile, Cathy, the outcast teenage daughter of an executed tout, finds herself in the crosshairs of Handy Byrne, a “local republican legend and all-around revolutionary hero” with a violent, unpredictable streak. As the situation spirals out of control and the atmosphere of paranoia grows, Francie begins to question his devotion to the cause to which he’s dedicated his life.

Duffy’s tense, brutal story unspools in the lyrical voice of an omniscient narrator, a third person plural voice belonging to some unnamed member of the community (or perhaps the community itself). The appropriately named town is the site of backstabbings and doublecrosses, mixed loyalties and strong prejudices. It’s a place where residents have become accustomed to turning a blind eye to unforgivable acts, including rape and murder. At one point, a crowd of people pass by an assault victim lying “completely exposed” on the ground outside the local pub “pretending to see nothing, not a thing, no thing, absolutely nothing.” The scene draws pointed attention to how bystanders’ complicity can foster an environment of fear and terror.

The IRA members in CROSS believe strongly in the justice of their cause. But the fight has been going on so long, and the battle lines are so firmly drawn, that horrifying violence has come to seem rote and routine. Now that a ceasefire is finally on the horizon, they’re looking at a future where they’ll be forced to put down their arms, a shift that will set them adrift in an uncertain new reality where men in suits have more power than men with guns. With larger political forces at work above them, all of these minor players in a long-standing conflict are jockeying for power and out for revenge. Their various machinations build to an unavoidably savage climax, where more blood is shed with little purpose or meaning.

While the headlines might promise peace, on the ground, that promise seems like a mirage. “No there was no end to this thing,” Nailer, one of the local IRA leaders, thinks as the book draws to a close. “No end to it at all.”