So sorry that I haven’t posted an update in a while. But I’ve been working away at various edits of The Undiscovered Country to get it ready for publication. I’ll keep you posted as the book design progresses and publication dates become clearer.

As I was editing I began to wonder what happened next to some of the characters who survive the pages of The Undiscovered Country. I began to ponder on how their fortunes may have been shaped by the Civil War and Partition that followed the War of Independence, and how they coped with the monstrous systems of discrimination against Catholics in the North, and against women across the whole island, that disfigured so much of the 20th century history of Ireland.

Suffice to say I’m now working on a sequel, tentatively entitled Some Service to the State that begins to explore some of these questions, once more through the medium of murder. 

This time the book will be set amongst the communities of South Armagh and North Louth who, in 1921, were forcibly split apart by a British imposed border so arbitrary that, for example, in the village of Jonesborough the Church of Ireland minister would speak on a Sunday morning from his pulpit to his congregation in the body of the church who were, because of the border, now sitting in another country.

Some Service to the State begins with two of the characters from The Undiscovered Country meeting in Newry, and over a cup of coffee, deciding that they need to go poking into things that others very much wish they would just mind their own business about. Dark deeds and bloodshed threaten.

Anyone interested in what happens next?