Northern Spy is the second book chosen for book club, also penned by an Irish writer. It could probably be described as a 'normie' book - something normal people would pick up to read at an airport, with short chapters and plenty of breaks to match dwindling attention spans and commuter lifestyles. This style of writing fits well with the crime thriller genre, but I am never quite sold on present tense narratives. Rather than increasing tension by adding immediacy to the action, it usually makes me want to read faster without absorbing or reflecting on details. This is likely an intentional effect, yet it does tend toward literary indigestion. These mild criticisms aside, Flynn Berry is a far better writer than the noxious John Boyne. Whilst characterisation is relatively flat, Berry's characters at least have the advantage of feeling like real people, as opposed to Boyne's crudities. Berry's primary strength is creating realistic domestic scenes that readers can easily relate to.
The novel is set in Northern island, where BBC news producer and single mother Tessa discovers that her sister, Marion, has joined the IRA. Tessa is coerced into working as an informer, with an MI5 handler who she reports to. She is forced to choose between loyalty to her terrorist sister, and her personal, pacifist ideals. In keeping with the crime genre, the internal conflict never lets up, and the reader is kept turning the pages with a mounting sense of dread. Tessa's motivations are realistic up to a certain point, but when she crosses a line that endangers her baby's life and her own, the suspension of disbelief begins to waver. I understand that having a protagonist act like a rational human being would not make for a thrilling climax, but there needs to be a stronger sense of inevitability at play, such as removing character agency altogether. I burned through this book in four days and enjoyed it for what it was.
Rating: 3/5
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