Cross by Austin Duffy review – a tense Troubles tale

“Everyone knew Francie and Francie knew everyone. He was at the centre of everything and he knew everything.” So the long-serving IRA man Francie Begley is described by slippery politician Máirtín O’Cuilleanáin in Austin Duffy’s riveting and gritty Troubles novel, Cross. Set in 1994, in the months before the provisional ceasefire, the book takes its title from the fictional northern Irish border town of Cross, an outpost in “so-called bandit country ... this hotbed of republicanism”. Duffy dramatises the tortuous shift from violence to real political change in the front rooms and pubs of Cross, with the two wings of the republican cause embodied by Francie and O’Cuilleanáin. It’s no accident that O’Cuilleanáin is known as MOC by the paramilitaries, with its echo of “master of ceremonies”; he’s the one pulling the strings in Westminster and Stormont.

With most recent Troubles novels, such as David Keenan’s For the Good Times , Anna Burns’s Milkman and Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses , set in the dark days of 1970s Belfast, it’s refreshing and instructive to read one that plays out during the peace process. In Milkman, nothing and no one is named. In Cross, everyone is named and reputations are crucial. There’s no escaping the town’s whisper network, a grapevine that Francie manipulates with virtuosic precision: “He’d practically know your business before you knew it yourself.”

The novel begins with the murder of an RUC policeman in a pub urinal after his choir practice, an operation masterminded by Francie. Though he ordered the hit, Francie imagines the “grieving house with crying children and a hysterical wife. It was either a strength or a weakness that Francie could picture all of it.” This essential humanity serves him well later, though it doesn’t stop him attending the RUC man’s funeral in a chilling scene where he notes yet more names and number plates.

When it becomes clear there’s an informer – “a tout” – in their midst, even Francie is unsure who the rat might be. It could be Handy Byrne, a psychopathic marksman, but his family’s republican credentials argue against it. The finger eventually points to Widow Donnelley’s missing son; a “bad article, pure lowlife scum”, who is brought to heel by Casio, an “infamous inquisitor and tout catcher”. In another unnerving scene, the teenager is violently interrogated upstairs in a suburban house while Casio and his crew enjoy tea and morning rashers in the kitchen. Francie is stoical: “That’s life. You make your choices and it plays out. Same for everybody.” You either risk all for an ideology or pay the price of betraying the cause.

The main tension is between those who’ll stop at nothing to end British colonial rule and those who make violence a cause of its own

Yet the main tension is between those who will stop at nothing to end British colonial rule and those who have made violence a cause of its own. Duffy shows us IRA commanders and their hoodlums watching Chuck Norris videos and lounging about with takeaways while touts are gratuitously tortured. When Francie unexpectedly falls off the wagon, he rants: “Brits Out my arse. If we wanted that it would have been done by now ... [we] settled instead for the chance of being the Big Man.” For him, the ceasefire is a sellout: “Jobs for the boys in suits and that’s about it.”

Francie’s spectacular unravelling becomes a metaphor for the divergence of the military and political wings of the IRA; a fissure O’Cuilleanáin exploits ruthlessly. The politician knows he must rein in the paramilitaries, while keeping Cross as the “jewel in the crown of our resistance”. In the key scene where Francie is questioned by O’Cuilleanáin in a car, he’s advised: “The Yanks are involved ... We can’t afford to look like goons.” The grilling is made edgier still by Duffy’s Tarantino-esque dialogue: “Are you a Wet Wet Wet fan?” O’Cuilleanáin asks, to soften Francie up as they listen to the radio. “This fella’s got some voice on him.”

Francie eventually achieves a tragic pathos, haunted by his deeds; his “victims’ voices a banshee’s lure that kept him up at all hours”. The novel remains tense up until its shocking conclusion, where Handy Byrne and the Widow Donnelly settle old scores; a squalid full stop with no classical sense of justice, and one emblematic of the whole terrible saga of the fight for Irish independence. Duffy’s triumph is to remain agnostic throughout, simply allowing his characters to speak and act for themselves.

• Jude Cook’s second novel Jacob’s Advice was published by Unbound in 2020. Cross by Austin Duffy is published by Granta (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.