SOME NORN IRON TBR

Their counterparts from the Republic featured last week, so its only fair to give a bit of a shout-out to their cousins up North this week.....

Colin Bateman, Sam Millar, Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway and Eoin McNamee - step forward and take a bow!

Colin Bateman - Belfast Confidential (2005)

They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Well, as far as Dan Starkey's concerned, 'they' can stick it where the sun don't shine because right now helping his wife with the unpacking is the least of his worries...No sooner than Dan has moved into his new Belfast home, his best mate, Mouse, is murdered - leaving him to catch a killer, become Editor of the obscenely successful scandal magazine, "Belfast Confidential", and compile the much-coveted Power List.

Adrian McKinty - Hidden River (2004)

Alexander Lawson is an ex-detective for Northern Ireland's police force. After a disastrous six-month stint in the drug squad, he became addicted to heroin and resigned in disgrace. Now twenty-four, sickly, and on the dole, Alex learns that his high school love, Victoria Patawasti, has been murdered in America. Victoria's wealthy family sends Alex to Colorado to investigate the case, and he seizes the opportunity for a chance at redemption. But things don't go exactly as planned. Struggling to kick his heroin habit, forced to go on the run after the only credible witness to Victoria's murder is accidentally killed, wanted by both the Colorado cops and the Ulster police who believe he has information about a corruption scandal, and with the murderer closing all the time, Alex will have a fight on his hands just to stay alive, never mind solving the case.

Eoin McNamee - The Ultras (2004)

In 1970s Ireland the British establishment conducted its struggle with the IRA in the "dirty war". This novel, set around the real-life figure of Captain Nairac, recreates the intrigue, loyalism and violence of a time when friend could turn foe overnight and nothing was ever quite as it seemed.

Brian McGilloway - The Rising (2010)

When Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin is summoned to a burning barn, he finds inside the charred remains of a man who is quickly identified as a local drug dealer, Martin Kielty. It soon becomes clear that Kielty's death was no accident, and suspicion falls on a local vigilante group. Former paramilitaries, the men call themselves The Rising. Meanwhile, a former colleague's teenage son has gone missing during a seaside camping trip. Devlin is relieved when the boy's mother, Caroline Williams, receives a text message from her son's phone, and so when a body is reported, washed up on a nearby beach, the inspector is baffled. When another drug dealer is killed, Devlin realises that the spate of deaths is more complex than mere vigilantism. But just as it seems he is close to understanding the case, a personal crisis will strike at the heart of Ben's own family, and he will be forced to confront the compromises his career has forced upon him. With his fourth novel, McGilloway announces himself as one of the most exciting crime novelists around: gripping, heartbreaking and always surprising, "The Rising" is a tour de force - McGilloway's most personal novel so far.

Sam Millar - The Redemption Factory (2005)

In a wood at night, a young woman witnesses the murder of a whistleblower by a corrupt businessman, owner of an abattoir. Paul Goodman, a would-be snooker champion who works at the abattoir, has never known his father and believes that he deserted him when young. But he is befriended by the one man who holds the key to the mystery of his disappearance, the man responsible for his death.

Stuart Neville - The Twelve (2009)

Fegan has been a 'hard man,' an IRA killer in northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by twelve ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he's going to have to kill the men who gave him orders. 

As he's working his way down the list he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too. Now he has given Fate - and his quarry - a hostage. Is this Fegan's ultimate mistake?