The Connemara Connection

"The Connemara Connection" is a novel of suspense. The setting is the west coast of Ireland, the Connemara peninsula, in the early 1990's. Charley Gibson, a young CIA agent, is sent there to try and find how, and by whom, the IRA are smuggling explosives into Northern Ireland. It is suspected that an American girl is involved in bringing financial support. Therefore the involvement of our Central Intelligence.

The book opens introducing us to a group of IRA members as they plan the transfer of bomb material from a Libyan freighter off the coast of Connemara. they are Wolfe Morrison, his wife Sheila, her brother Sean and the leader, Ben. Wolfe is an idealist, committed to the dream of freedom, and Sheila is undyingly loyal to him and to the cause. Sean is a young man twisted by hate and Ben is a fierce and desperate veteran of the Irish struggles. It develops that their plan involves not only the smuggling, but the kidnapping of the Queen while she is making a secret visit with her husband to an isolated fishing lodge deep in Connemara. Their plan is to send one of their members, Kevin, to go with the American fiel, Bettina, as tourists taking a horseback trek across the mountains from Clifden on the west to Galway and then into the North. While under this cover, they will pick up the stuff and carry it over to Galway, seemingly two tourists taking the trek for recreation.