kirkusreviews.com
Half a century after the fact, a cold case in Northern Ireland
provides a frame for a deeply observed history of the Troubles.
In 1972, though only 38, Jean McConville was the mother of 10,
trying to raise them on a widow’s pension in a cloud of depression—a walking
tale of bad luck turned all the worse when she comforted a wounded British
soldier, bringing the dreaded graffito “Brit lover” to her door. Not long
after, masked guerrillas took her from her home in the Catholic ghetto of
Belfast; three decades later, bones found on a remote beach were identified as
hers. These events are rooted in centuries of discord, but, as New
Yorker staff writer Keefe (The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the
Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, 2009, etc.) recounts, the
kidnapping and killing took place in the darkest days of the near civil war
between Catholics and Protestants. Another Belfast graffito of the time read,
“If you’re not confused you don’t know what’s going on,” and the author does an
excellent job of keeping an exceedingly complicated storyline on track. At its
heart is Gerry Adams, who eventually brokered the truce between warring
factions while insisting that he was never a member of the IRA, whose
fighters killed McConville. “Of course he was in the IRA,” said an
erstwhile comrade. “The British know it. The people on the street know it.
The dogs know it on the street.” Yet, as this unhappy
story shows, one of the great sorrows of Northern Ireland is that naming
murderers, even long after their crimes and even after their deaths, is sure to
bring terrible things on a person even today. Keefe’s reconstruction of events
and the players involved is careful and assured. Adams himself doubtless won’t be
pleased with it, although his cause will probably prevail. As the author
writes, “Adams will probably not live to see a united Ireland, but it seems
that such a day will inevitably come”—perhaps as an indirect, ironic result of
Brexit.
A harrowing story of politically motivated crime that could not
have been better told.
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