Some Service to the State

The year is 1925. In the borderlands of a newly partitioned Ireland a doctor new to Northern Ireland begins a search for a missing patient a young girl who has fallen pregnant. <br>Meeting a wall of silence she enlists the help of a local a former IRA volunteer recently released from jail. Their enquiry brings them into contact with a community still suffering from the wounds of civil war. More worrying for them they find they are beginning to rattle skeletons that some powerful people would prefer went undisturbed. <br>As they slowly begin to unravel the truth of the girl's fate they find that the traces they are following lead to some crimes more monstrous that they ever previously considered. <br>Some Service to the State is a superb book with dialogue that would not be out of place on the stage of the Abbey Theatre. Mick McAlinden is a former IRA man caught on the wrong side of the border and the wrong side of history: a law student who ends up working in an abattoir. Aidan McQuade has created a character whose travails highlight the thwarted dreams and the tragedy of partition for so many people in post-revolutionary Ireland. <br>- Ronan McGreevy journalist and author of Great Hatred: the Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. <br>Like Graham Greene Dennis Lehane and Louise Penny before him McQuade takes the humble crime story and uses it like a scalpel to probe and expose the darkness in human souls and human society. <br>- Martin W. Sandler National Book Award-winning author and historian. <br>The sparring sparky dialogue is a delight and never fails to vivify the darkness. McQuade shows prodigious skill in shining a spotlight on the scandal of mother-and-baby homes and in brilliantly imbuing the past with his own potent blend of heart soul and wit. <br>- Rosemary Jenkinson multi-award winning playwright and author of Marching Season.