The Trigger Man

``The cool morning air came in, carrying the chirping of birds and the sweet smells of the farmyard.'' Fergus Callan wakes up to this idyllic scene on a snatched visit to his boyhood home in Dubliner Joyce's second terse thriller, following Off the Record . A fugitive IRA assassin living illegally in Boston, Callan has risked his neck returning to Ireland to aid an old comrade. Once back, lyrical moments are brief as he is pursued by Inspector Keerins, an ambitious young intelligence officer, through a series of chases, betrayals and escapes. Callan outwits Keerins brilliantly and often, but because he is unwilling to kill to save himself, the trap relentlessly closes on him. Compounding the ironies implicit in deadly deeds committed in a setting of great beauty, is the sense Joyce conveys of the tragic futility of the Irish struggle and the seeming impossibility of its resolution. (May)