cover image Trusted like the Fox

Trusted like the Fox

Wesley Burrowes. Somerville (Dufour, dist.), $26 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-0-9955239-7-5

Irish playwright and screenwriter Burrowes (1930–2015) movingly examines the Protestant-Catholic divide in this nominal thriller. In 1972, Bill Burgess, a successful TV writer in Dublin who grew up in Belfast, visits Duncairn, Northern Ireland, where he spent about a year living with relatives as a boy in 1941. Back then, relations between Catholics and Protestants in the small town were not pleasant, but generally not violent or fatal, as revealed in flashbacks. By 1972, attitudes and stances have hardened, and the atmosphere is one of suspicion, wariness, and hostility. Billy is slow to realize just how much the people he knew as a child have changed. Old friends like Ernie Swindle warn Billy he’s asking too many questions about current politics, and in one case his inquisitiveness leads to some Ulster men giving him a beating. The suspense grows when Ernie tells Billy that a bombing in a bar that was followed by a retaliatory killing will lead to yet another killing. Billy sets out to stop it. Burrowes paints a vivid picture of the inevitability of violence and the resulting human wreckage in this worthy novel. [em](Aug.) [/em]