Colette McVeigh: widow... mother... terrorist. A woman who has lived the Republican cause for all of her thirty-three years. A woman whose brothers are both heavily involved at a senior level in the IRA, whose husband was killed by the British security forces. A woman who is now an informer for MI5.
 
Apprehended by the police in an aborted bombing raid in London, Colette is given a simple choice: talk and see her children again, or stay silent and spend the rest of her life watching them grow up from behind the bars of a prison cell. Gradually and unwillingly she is led to betray her past by her young MI5 handler, David Ryan, who has never doubted where his loyalties lie. But when he follows Colette across the Irish Sea to Belfast, the very tenets of his existence -- trust, loyalty and honesty -- are quickly sacrificed on the pyre of the province's history. And, as he watches Colette put herself in increasing danger to fulfil her side of the bargain, he realizes that his professional integrity is irrevocably and fatally compromised.
 
Shadow Dancer is a chilling, complex and utterly compelling thriller about the choices we make and why we make them. It is a riveting portrait of a group of ten people torn apart by the strife of civil war and the overwhelming pull of family attachments.