The Twelve by Stuart Neville

Stuart Neville's first novel, The Twelve, aka The Ghosts of Belfast, came out in 2009 and won an LA Times Book Award. Also named as a top novel of that year by the LA Times and the New York Times, it's been followed by eight other novels and Neville's work has been widely translated.

Set in Belfast after the peace, but haunted by the recent sectarian Troubles, this book deals with universal themes: appearance versus reality and the costs of privileging the one over the other; loyalty versus betrayal, seen through chilling close-ups of people who assess the world in terms of insiders versus outsiders, and the moral bankruptcy of a creed of loyalty that absolutely forbids dissent. Neville's characters reveal in agonizing detail the the lengths people will go to in pursuit of money, power and belonging. Above all, this is a story about conscience.

Now that they "have their feet under the table at Stormont," former gangsters and killers have begun "shifting away from the rackets, the extortion, the thieving." Paul McGinty, once the enforcer who propagandized ignorant young foot soldiers to bomb and kill for his own ends, is now a (crookedly) elected politician. He dresses in fine clothes and has a lawyer in his pocket to distribute sinecures meant to keep former comrades in line.

Gerry Fegan has 'the sight.' After his father "dies of the drink," the little boy sees and holds the hand of his ghostly dad. Echoing the Irish political dictum to "say nothing," his frightened mother urges him to keep the sighting to himself to avoid being laughed at or bullied. As a young teen with few prospects, Gerry is recruited and used by McGinty. Caught after a bombing that kills three innocent bystanders, he is convicted and sentenced to twelve years in the Maze for terrorism.

As a middle-aged ex-prisoner, Gerry is deeply disillusioned. The "cause he once killed for [is] long gone, swallowed up by the avarice of men like McGinty." Haunted by the ghosts of his victims, Fegan is no longer able to "turn aside and say nothing." The twelve men, women and children he killed "in the name of politics," before he realized how he was being used and manipulated, have taken up residence. Relentlessly, these manifestations of conscience disturb Fegan's life by insisting he atone for their deaths. Unsurprisingly, he pursues the course they urge on him, hoping to gain some peace.

Though Gerry Fegan is under no illusion that he can ever enjoy a normal life, the mistreated Marie and her daughter offer him a glimmer of hope for redemption. Fiercely protective of her young daughter, the pale Marie inhabits the novel as a reminder of the price a violent society exacts from a woman who stands against the suffocating pressures of social conformity imposed upon her.

The Glaswegian ex-Black Watch soldier, David Campbell, is observed by secret service recruiters  to be "good in a scrap" and able to wriggle out of disciplinary charges. Accordingly, he's inducted into the undercover Fourteen Intelligence Company. Annexed to the SAS, Fourteen doesn't officially exist, though it's known to do "the dirty work, the stuff no one owns up to, the kind of things ordinary people go to prison for." Once Campbell leaves the Commando Training Centre, where he's been "brutalised for the good of the country," he's ready to infiltrate the Northern Irish paramilitaries as a double agent. Though his motivation is less well-developed than that of other characters, we glimpse him stroking the Red Hackle that symbolizes his former regiment and draw our own conclusions.

The history portrayed is all too real, and the story is tragic. Yet some moments of luminous beauty and hope contrast with the general darkness. The author shines a play of light over ironic and symbolic elements. While serving in the Maze, Gerry Fegan befriends Ronnie, a fellow prisoner. Dying of asbestos lung disease he got from working in the shipyards, the old man teaches him woodwork. Before his imprisonment, Fegan's tool was a deadly Walther pistol, but when Ronnie dies, he leaves Fegan a valuable Martin guitar and the skill to finish restoring it. Fegan then adds a third tool to his belt. The cell phone he buys symbolizes the hopeful possibility of protecting Marie and her child. And twelve, the tally of Fegan's ghosts, is of course the number of the disciples.

Though the genre is said to be hard-boiled, this lyrical and unusual novel by a writer with a sure and subtle touch conveys universal themes through deeply satisfying layers of meaning.