Northern Spy by Flynn Berry

One day, Tessa, a producer for a weekly political radio program at the Belfast office of the BBC, looks casually at a nearby television monitor and freezes when she sees her sister Marian:

She is standing with two men outside a petrol station, by a row of fuel pumps. Her ambulance must have been sent out to a call, though for some reason she isn’t wearing her uniform.

“The police are appealing for witnesses after an armed robbery in Templepatrick,” says the closed caption. A ringing starts in my ears. Only Marian’s face is in view of the security camera, the two men are turned away . . . .

Marian has something in her hands. She is leaning down and pulling it toward her. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m watching, as her hair and then her face seem to disappear. When she straightens, she’s wearing a black ski mask.

Tessa is a single mother, recently returned to work after giving birth, and perpetually exhausted. But she knows immediately that something dreadful has happened to her sister, who is supposed to be away hiking. She goes straight to the police to tell them the IRA must have forced Marian to participate in terrorist activities, although the detective doesn’t believe her.

Tessa, with her baby son Finn and her mother, waits in agony for news. The police tell her Marian is a member of the IRA, that she has a burner phone, and was involved in a bombing at a market where they had lunched recently. Tessa remembers unwillingly the only time they were apart was when Marian took Finn to the ladies room to change his diaper. Had she hidden a pipe bomb in the diaper bag? Tessa is Catholic and has grown up with the conflict in Northern Ireland but has not been involved in politics, although some consider her a sellout because she works for the BBC. Facing the truth about the sister she loves is the hardest thing Tessa has ever done, worse than confronting her unfaithful husband, worse than going back to work and leaving Finn in daycare. Then Marian reappears, asks for help, and Tessa is thrust in a world of espionage and danger.

This was a fast-paced, beautifully written, and very suspenseful novel of divided loyalties and memorable characters told in the first person, present tense. I liked how Tessa is so angry at her sister but still loves her; their mother is much more accepting of a terrorist daughter although her employers of 14 years fire her when they hear what Marian has done. In fact, part of Tessa’s fury is that Marian used Finn to cover her terrorist activity when she knows how crazy her sister is about her baby nephew. What made Marian, a conscientious EMT paramedic, betray what Tessa thought were shared values? Her decision to join the IRA destroys her family’s established life, without a clear way to move forward. Berry’s writing is clear and she is particularly gifted at describing Tessa’s obsession with every nuance of her son’s life. If I had listened to this audiobook without stopping, I might have got tired of the rhapsodies over baby Finn but, spread out during a week or so, it was endearing. I know so little about this conflict in Northern Ireland that I found this book fascinating, although I am still unclear about the exact date it is meant to take place. I appreciated the C.S. Lewis reference at the end and look forward to reading more by this author.  Four 1/2 stars!

This atmospheric book is my 28th for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Challenge.

Title: Northern Spy
Author: Flynn Berry
Narrator: Katharine Lee McEwan
Publication: Penguin Audio, 2021
Genre: Fiction/Suspense/Espionage
Setting: Belfast, 2008?
Source: Library