Divorcing Jack

In “post-terrorist” Belfast, the old hatreds continue to fester, and the politics remain deeply personal. Anyone, at any moment, may decide the war’s not yet over.

When his wife catches Belfast journalist Dan Starkey wrapped in the arms of a woman he hardly knows, his troubles are only beginning. Within hours his virtually anonymous girlfriend has been murdered, and before anyone can sort out whether she was killed by the IRA, Protestant extremists, or a jealous beau, Starkey becomes the killer’s next target. He had always kept himself above Belfast’s violent fray with the cynical, beer-drenched wit that fueled his notorious column in a Protestant newspaper. But when the Belfast police mark Starkey as their prime suspect, his wits are suddenly all he has left to keep himself ahead of both sides of the law—and to win back his wife. As he seeks to solve the crime himself, his frantic pursuit of the only clues to the killer’s identity leads him deep into the most guarded reaches of Northern Irish political power.

Overflowing with crisp dialogue and taut with sinister violence, Divorcing Jack, winner of the Betty Trask Prize for Fiction, is a novel you won’t want to put down.