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Con Maknazpy #1
Blood from a Shadow
"We are in the realm of tough guys doing tough guy things against other tough guys. There is something about author Gerard Cappa's style, as well as his hero Con Maknazpy, that carries echoes of Dashiell Hammett and the Continental Op." San Francisco Book Review
FROM THE BACK COVER:
2012. War weary Americans hail the endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the old enemy, Iran, is more dangerous than ever.
So the war on terror continues, but it must be kept in the shadows now. The Presidential machines cannot allow a mistake, there is an election to be won.
Con Maknazpy is weary too, still searching for his own peace. A hero in his native New York’s famous 69th Regiment, he just wants to retreat into the shadows of the streets he knows so well.
But Maknazpy is no ordinary man, he has been anointed with destiny. It’s in his blood and in the shadows of his soul. And the ghosts of the past and the future mark out that destiny, in blood. Blood that takes him to Ireland, Rome and Istanbul before he finds his own truth in the shadows of his Yonkers childhood.
Maknazpy’s destiny is to be a savior, but can he save himself?
******
"Blood From A Shadow is an interesting book that attempts an new approach to the conspiracy action thriller, but even read on this surface level alone, it's written in a way that delivers thrills without insulting your intelligence. Con Maznazpy is a New York veteran of the Iraq war, still bearing the scars of his experience. He's still trying to pull his life together when he's asked to make a trip to Ireland to visit the family of his former best friend Ferdia McErlane, whose father has committed suicide apparently after a failed property deal in Turkey. Suspicious of the means by which this request is delivered, Con nonetheless returns to the old homeland only to find that there is indeed rather more to the request than was admitted, and it leads him across Europe and Asia before back to New York on the trail of much a bigger conspiracy.
Cappa however hints that there is a parallel reading to be found here with the book of Irish legends featuring the mythical hero Cú Chulainn, known as the Táin. Those references aren't obvious or belabored however, the novel drawing from them in order to examine wider questions on the need for heroes - and on the attributes of bonds of loyalty to friends, to a cause or to an ideal that goes beyond consideration of duty or political gain. But it also questions whether that is even possible and whether there isn't an overriding genealogical imperative of blood at work that drives these unknowable actions.
Whether it's through this literary subtext or whether it's through the strengths in the writing itself, Blood From A Shadow does have an indefinable quality and true originality, finding a way to delve into a particularly Irish sensibility that has deep historical and mythological roots in its connection with the United States, and it places an unusual spin on a conventional genre that at times gives it an almost otherworldly quality.
******
Think Jim Thompson, James M Cain, Chester Himes and Eric Ambler. Reality is warped by confusion and lies, and the hero is always the last to know.
FROM THE BACK COVER:
2012. War weary Americans hail the endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the old enemy, Iran, is more dangerous than ever.
So the war on terror continues, but it must be kept in the shadows now. The Presidential machines cannot allow a mistake, there is an election to be won.
Con Maknazpy is weary too, still searching for his own peace. A hero in his native New York’s famous 69th Regiment, he just wants to retreat into the shadows of the streets he knows so well.
But Maknazpy is no ordinary man, he has been anointed with destiny. It’s in his blood and in the shadows of his soul. And the ghosts of the past and the future mark out that destiny, in blood. Blood that takes him to Ireland, Rome and Istanbul before he finds his own truth in the shadows of his Yonkers childhood.
Maknazpy’s destiny is to be a savior, but can he save himself?
******
"Blood From A Shadow is an interesting book that attempts an new approach to the conspiracy action thriller, but even read on this surface level alone, it's written in a way that delivers thrills without insulting your intelligence. Con Maznazpy is a New York veteran of the Iraq war, still bearing the scars of his experience. He's still trying to pull his life together when he's asked to make a trip to Ireland to visit the family of his former best friend Ferdia McErlane, whose father has committed suicide apparently after a failed property deal in Turkey. Suspicious of the means by which this request is delivered, Con nonetheless returns to the old homeland only to find that there is indeed rather more to the request than was admitted, and it leads him across Europe and Asia before back to New York on the trail of much a bigger conspiracy.
Cappa however hints that there is a parallel reading to be found here with the book of Irish legends featuring the mythical hero Cú Chulainn, known as the Táin. Those references aren't obvious or belabored however, the novel drawing from them in order to examine wider questions on the need for heroes - and on the attributes of bonds of loyalty to friends, to a cause or to an ideal that goes beyond consideration of duty or political gain. But it also questions whether that is even possible and whether there isn't an overriding genealogical imperative of blood at work that drives these unknowable actions.
Whether it's through this literary subtext or whether it's through the strengths in the writing itself, Blood From A Shadow does have an indefinable quality and true originality, finding a way to delve into a particularly Irish sensibility that has deep historical and mythological roots in its connection with the United States, and it places an unusual spin on a conventional genre that at times gives it an almost otherworldly quality.
******
Think Jim Thompson, James M Cain, Chester Himes and Eric Ambler. Reality is warped by confusion and lies, and the hero is always the last to know.
291 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 12, 2012
9 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Gerard Cappa
5 books55 followersChan amháin saor ach Gaelach.
The Irish proverb says “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine” – we live in each others shadows. This is an observation that we depend on each other, and should therefore be benevolent and supportive of other people.
It could also mean that none of us are the autonomous individualists as idealized by modern western culture – the free thinking independent, responsible only to our individual conscience which we have each created in isolation.
I was born in the north of Ireland in 1959, and was therefore 10 years old when the Troubles restarted in 1969.
‘Blood from a Shadow’ is by no means a ‘Troubles’ book, nor is it an attempt by me to rationalize or give my version of who were the heroes and who the traitors. For one thing, I don’t feel entitled to bend my characters to suit that purpose. For another, I must confess to feeling an unease, even a slight antagonism, when I read some other books that handle the subject badly, or lazily: too many lives were damaged, too many survivors still hurt, to excuse the comic book narratives that exploit their suffering and do justice to no-one.
Like every other 10 year old, I learned to live a life we thought was normal, even if that normality was a heady fusion of the shadow cast by warrior-heroes, the baggage of competing cultural realities and our collective premonition that it would get worse before it would get better.
Anyway, forty something years later, and it is better. Not perfect, maybe a work in progress, but better, and good enough to permit me to delve into some of those notions of free will, predetermination and the influence of our hand me down attitudes.
Of course, it isn’t only the Irish who receive cultural certainties, and I hope ‘Blood from a Shadow’ creaks open the lid to shed a little doubt on the self-confirming shibboleths that turn slogans into war cries across the east/west divide.
The Irish proverb says “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine” – we live in each others shadows. This is an observation that we depend on each other, and should therefore be benevolent and supportive of other people.
It could also mean that none of us are the autonomous individualists as idealized by modern western culture – the free thinking independent, responsible only to our individual conscience which we have each created in isolation.
I was born in the north of Ireland in 1959, and was therefore 10 years old when the Troubles restarted in 1969.
‘Blood from a Shadow’ is by no means a ‘Troubles’ book, nor is it an attempt by me to rationalize or give my version of who were the heroes and who the traitors. For one thing, I don’t feel entitled to bend my characters to suit that purpose. For another, I must confess to feeling an unease, even a slight antagonism, when I read some other books that handle the subject badly, or lazily: too many lives were damaged, too many survivors still hurt, to excuse the comic book narratives that exploit their suffering and do justice to no-one.
Like every other 10 year old, I learned to live a life we thought was normal, even if that normality was a heady fusion of the shadow cast by warrior-heroes, the baggage of competing cultural realities and our collective premonition that it would get worse before it would get better.
Anyway, forty something years later, and it is better. Not perfect, maybe a work in progress, but better, and good enough to permit me to delve into some of those notions of free will, predetermination and the influence of our hand me down attitudes.
Of course, it isn’t only the Irish who receive cultural certainties, and I hope ‘Blood from a Shadow’ creaks open the lid to shed a little doubt on the self-confirming shibboleths that turn slogans into war cries across the east/west divide.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 21, 2025
A good strong thriller, fast paced with lots of tension. A riveting roller coaster of a ride (no danger of boredom with this one).
Gerard Cappa is definitely an author to watch out for.
Gerard Cappa is definitely an author to watch out for.
December 10, 2012
Blood From A Shadow is an action-packed political thriller from Belfast writer Gerard Cappa, told in the first person. The hero, Con Maknazpy (who, in the beginning, thinks he is the son of an Irish-American Pole), is a veteran of the Iraq war suffering from PTSD whose family life back in New York is going to pieces. Although he knows he should spend his time reconciling himself with the disillusioned wife and son, who have borne the brunt of his erratic behavior since he left the service, the simple Irish-American value system which he holds dear, the devotion to his childhood friends, and his unquestioning belief in his country, right or wrong, all make him easy fodder to be tricked into a Kafkaesque situation (think: the Castle) in which, like a piece of useful meat, he is fed blindly through an evil sausage making machine that involves halts for ever more poisonous ingredients in Belfast, Rome, Istanbul and back in New York.
As the novel begins, he thinks the duty he is inveigled into performing, by a person he trusts in New York, is to inform the mother of a childhood friend of the friend’s death, but every few pages the task and the environment change. Until quite close to the end of the novel, as he is led from being the unwitting killer from one violent situation into yet another, he doesn’t know what the hell is going on.
As an upstanding Irish-American, for whom the ould sod is paradise, there are a couple of hilarious scenes at the beginning of the book after he stumbles into a loyalist pub in Belfast and shows the IRA tattoo on his arm. Later in the novel, Con shows himself to be more at home among the Yazidis and gypsies of Istanbul than in the segregated capital of Northern Ireland.
Throughout the book, a Rambo-like Con continues to flounder for meaning as he fights to uphold his values by making the corpses around him pile higher. His philosophy is a simple one. “Shit happens” and when shit happens, you have to act or react. Every institution, or representative of one, with which he comes in contact, uses and betrays him; the Catholic Church, the CIA and other shadowy American intelligence organizations, his PTSD counselor, the Israeli and Brit plotters who wish to bring down a second 9/11 on the United States, hazy groups of drug runners. Wherever the true red-white-and blue Con can be manipulated into killing one of their private targets, one of these groups or organizations will make a tool of him.
The only institution that gives Con any sort of respite from violence or help is, ironically, the Anglican Church in Istanbul The end of the book reveals the awful secret, by American standards, that the root of all evil lies in the hoary myth of motherhood and apple pie. For their own ends, Irish-American mothers will favor one child over another, while conditioning them both for Uncle Sam or faction fighting. At the same time as their mother’s milk makes their boy children simple, honest men who respond gratefully to calls to arms, it also blinds them to the truth of how they will be exploited for partisan ends. The men like Con who volunteer, believe in the nobility of their cause, but ultimately find the real reason they are sent to places like Afghanistan and Iraq (and previously Vietnam) is vilely to butcher many more innocent women and children than enemies bearing arms, and then live with the consequences of their war crimes.
Once these traumatized men leave the service, they are left on their own to struggle with their physical and psychological handicaps. Anybody who has read this far will understand that I have a beef about the way American veterans have been treated after serving their country. Nearly every institution that promises to help them lets them down or even, as in Con’s case, willingly throws them back into harm’s way.
On one level, Blood from a Shadow, can be read as a page-turner, and on that level it works perfectly. I can recommend it highly to anyone who wants thrills from beginning to end and value for their money. The reader will lose count of the bodies Con leaves in his wake, not only the guilty but also the innocent men and women in the netherworld of Istanbul whom he blithely recruits to help him, paying no attention to the price they will have to pay, until it is too late to save them from him.
But Cappa does not present Con solely as a mindless Rambo figure. Although limited by the cultural boundaries of his upbringing, Con is an observer who becomes keenly aware of the individuals, men, women and children he sees in Iraq and Turkey and realizes that the people who have been misrepresented to him as primitive and violent are, in many ways, equal or superior to the ones he comes from, which have been waging terrible warfare and attempted genocide on the rest of the world since the beginning of the modern era.
So, on another level, this book can be read as a scathing indictment of what Northern Irish bigotry, American redneck patriotism, the billions of Western dollars invested in weapons and men of mass destruction, what Eisenhower described as the "military-industrial complex", and the wish to transform the rest of the world into fawning clones of Western democracy can do to their own trusting children: make monsters of them. In this novel, Con begins to doubt the ideology that formed him: he cannot ignore the finer points of the people and cultures he has been trained to destroy. That is what makes Blood from a Shadow even more than an action thriller. Con kills in the name of all he believes true, until the point where most of what he believes true is revealed to him as false. Stuart Neville’s Ghosts of Belfast comes to mind, in the way it delineated how the people who did the actual killing during the troubles are haunted by their ghosts while many of the cute bastards who manoeuvred them into it are now swanning around the Northern Irish Parliament, with all expenses paid.
A few reviewers on Amazon have drawn attention to the parallels between Cappa’s novel and Irish mythology, so I won’t go further into those aspects of the novel. Below are a few parallels of my own that came to mind as, I was reading it.
I am a country music fan, so the first parallel was listening to Toby Keith, in a crowded hall in Tennessee, singing The Red White and Blue and An American Soldier, both of which you can listen to on Youtube (be patient for the first minute, as the ad works its way out of the frame). Keith could be singing about Con or his friend, Ferdia.
A second parallel, is one of the verses from Tom Paxton's song, "When Princes Meet", which describes how, once a poor little man like Con has already served, he "must do more". There are many powerful descriptions in the novel of how all the great lords he thought he could trust betrayed him:
"When kings make war, the poor little men must fight them./They must do more, They hold out their necks for great lord's swords to bite them./The sons of the lords cleave through their ranks, In the hopes some warrior king might knight them./It's what the poor little men are for, when kings make war."
A third parallel came to me during the novel's descriptions of the atrocities committed by Ferdia and/or Con in Iraq, a quote from the Duke of Wellington. The Wellington I'm thinking of is the one who is said to have said before the Battle of Waterloo, "I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me."
Cappa's novel shows that, although we in the West are proud of our recent technological progress and "civilizing influence", in truth we are still the same Norman warlords, Teutonic knights and Frankish crusaders who colonized the non-Christian parts of Europe in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries by putting to the sword any peoples, especially the Scandinavians, who did not blindly accept our diktat of the one true faith. We're continuing to frighten the hell out of nearly every civilization we've come in contact with over the past five hundred years. The one thing that may save us is the realization by the Con Maknazpys of this world that they can shuck off the indoctrination that began in the cradle and open up to the gentler influences of other traditions, cultures, philosophies and belief systems.
As the novel begins, he thinks the duty he is inveigled into performing, by a person he trusts in New York, is to inform the mother of a childhood friend of the friend’s death, but every few pages the task and the environment change. Until quite close to the end of the novel, as he is led from being the unwitting killer from one violent situation into yet another, he doesn’t know what the hell is going on.
As an upstanding Irish-American, for whom the ould sod is paradise, there are a couple of hilarious scenes at the beginning of the book after he stumbles into a loyalist pub in Belfast and shows the IRA tattoo on his arm. Later in the novel, Con shows himself to be more at home among the Yazidis and gypsies of Istanbul than in the segregated capital of Northern Ireland.
Throughout the book, a Rambo-like Con continues to flounder for meaning as he fights to uphold his values by making the corpses around him pile higher. His philosophy is a simple one. “Shit happens” and when shit happens, you have to act or react. Every institution, or representative of one, with which he comes in contact, uses and betrays him; the Catholic Church, the CIA and other shadowy American intelligence organizations, his PTSD counselor, the Israeli and Brit plotters who wish to bring down a second 9/11 on the United States, hazy groups of drug runners. Wherever the true red-white-and blue Con can be manipulated into killing one of their private targets, one of these groups or organizations will make a tool of him.
The only institution that gives Con any sort of respite from violence or help is, ironically, the Anglican Church in Istanbul The end of the book reveals the awful secret, by American standards, that the root of all evil lies in the hoary myth of motherhood and apple pie. For their own ends, Irish-American mothers will favor one child over another, while conditioning them both for Uncle Sam or faction fighting. At the same time as their mother’s milk makes their boy children simple, honest men who respond gratefully to calls to arms, it also blinds them to the truth of how they will be exploited for partisan ends. The men like Con who volunteer, believe in the nobility of their cause, but ultimately find the real reason they are sent to places like Afghanistan and Iraq (and previously Vietnam) is vilely to butcher many more innocent women and children than enemies bearing arms, and then live with the consequences of their war crimes.
Once these traumatized men leave the service, they are left on their own to struggle with their physical and psychological handicaps. Anybody who has read this far will understand that I have a beef about the way American veterans have been treated after serving their country. Nearly every institution that promises to help them lets them down or even, as in Con’s case, willingly throws them back into harm’s way.
On one level, Blood from a Shadow, can be read as a page-turner, and on that level it works perfectly. I can recommend it highly to anyone who wants thrills from beginning to end and value for their money. The reader will lose count of the bodies Con leaves in his wake, not only the guilty but also the innocent men and women in the netherworld of Istanbul whom he blithely recruits to help him, paying no attention to the price they will have to pay, until it is too late to save them from him.
But Cappa does not present Con solely as a mindless Rambo figure. Although limited by the cultural boundaries of his upbringing, Con is an observer who becomes keenly aware of the individuals, men, women and children he sees in Iraq and Turkey and realizes that the people who have been misrepresented to him as primitive and violent are, in many ways, equal or superior to the ones he comes from, which have been waging terrible warfare and attempted genocide on the rest of the world since the beginning of the modern era.
So, on another level, this book can be read as a scathing indictment of what Northern Irish bigotry, American redneck patriotism, the billions of Western dollars invested in weapons and men of mass destruction, what Eisenhower described as the "military-industrial complex", and the wish to transform the rest of the world into fawning clones of Western democracy can do to their own trusting children: make monsters of them. In this novel, Con begins to doubt the ideology that formed him: he cannot ignore the finer points of the people and cultures he has been trained to destroy. That is what makes Blood from a Shadow even more than an action thriller. Con kills in the name of all he believes true, until the point where most of what he believes true is revealed to him as false. Stuart Neville’s Ghosts of Belfast comes to mind, in the way it delineated how the people who did the actual killing during the troubles are haunted by their ghosts while many of the cute bastards who manoeuvred them into it are now swanning around the Northern Irish Parliament, with all expenses paid.
A few reviewers on Amazon have drawn attention to the parallels between Cappa’s novel and Irish mythology, so I won’t go further into those aspects of the novel. Below are a few parallels of my own that came to mind as, I was reading it.
I am a country music fan, so the first parallel was listening to Toby Keith, in a crowded hall in Tennessee, singing The Red White and Blue and An American Soldier, both of which you can listen to on Youtube (be patient for the first minute, as the ad works its way out of the frame). Keith could be singing about Con or his friend, Ferdia.
A second parallel, is one of the verses from Tom Paxton's song, "When Princes Meet", which describes how, once a poor little man like Con has already served, he "must do more". There are many powerful descriptions in the novel of how all the great lords he thought he could trust betrayed him:
"When kings make war, the poor little men must fight them./They must do more, They hold out their necks for great lord's swords to bite them./The sons of the lords cleave through their ranks, In the hopes some warrior king might knight them./It's what the poor little men are for, when kings make war."
A third parallel came to me during the novel's descriptions of the atrocities committed by Ferdia and/or Con in Iraq, a quote from the Duke of Wellington. The Wellington I'm thinking of is the one who is said to have said before the Battle of Waterloo, "I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me."
Cappa's novel shows that, although we in the West are proud of our recent technological progress and "civilizing influence", in truth we are still the same Norman warlords, Teutonic knights and Frankish crusaders who colonized the non-Christian parts of Europe in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries by putting to the sword any peoples, especially the Scandinavians, who did not blindly accept our diktat of the one true faith. We're continuing to frighten the hell out of nearly every civilization we've come in contact with over the past five hundred years. The one thing that may save us is the realization by the Con Maknazpys of this world that they can shuck off the indoctrination that began in the cradle and open up to the gentler influences of other traditions, cultures, philosophies and belief systems.
January 16, 2013
AMAZING
The book is such an action filled page turner, even after you put it down, the scenes and wondering of what is awaiting Con next is in your mind all day. I couldnt get the incident between Ferdia and the Iraqi woodmaker out of my mind for days, unfortunately incidents like this and many many more have happened during the war to the innocent people...
Con, an American/Irish veteran of 69th regiment, visits his best friend Ferdia Mcerlane's mother in Belfast and finds himself in a number of troubles that leads him to Rome, Istanbul and back to NY which reveals alot of secrets including about his own background. Very strong characters and beautifully written Conspiracy Thriller. I have read some reviews that it would make a good movie and I strongly agree. Very good read.
Special thanks to Gerard Cappa for sending me the book, I have most definitely enjoyed it..
August 25, 2012
Blood from a Shadow
A fast paced thriller full of intrigue and strong characterisation. The pace and action dialogue would sit equally as well as a cinema piece and the striking visual references reinforce the movie feel of the work.
There is certainly enough action to keep the pages turning but there is more going on here than wham bam kick ass adventure.
The lead character maintains an internal monologue that lays open his vulnerable soul. This is no hero knight assured in his moral choices or a defender of the free and good world.
The plot keeps him spinning but also asks questions about destiny and self-determination, duty and loyalty, responsibility and kinship.
The lead character's failings make him an unlikely hero but this is really a story of the marginalised and there are extra layers to be enjoyed even while the thriller action continues at break neck pace.
So, it is a really good thriller but don't let that fool you, this book could easily be on the literary fiction shelf.
A fast paced thriller full of intrigue and strong characterisation. The pace and action dialogue would sit equally as well as a cinema piece and the striking visual references reinforce the movie feel of the work.
There is certainly enough action to keep the pages turning but there is more going on here than wham bam kick ass adventure.
The lead character maintains an internal monologue that lays open his vulnerable soul. This is no hero knight assured in his moral choices or a defender of the free and good world.
The plot keeps him spinning but also asks questions about destiny and self-determination, duty and loyalty, responsibility and kinship.
The lead character's failings make him an unlikely hero but this is really a story of the marginalised and there are extra layers to be enjoyed even while the thriller action continues at break neck pace.
So, it is a really good thriller but don't let that fool you, this book could easily be on the literary fiction shelf.
May 9, 2014
This was a great story with lovely prose, if that sort of violence can be lovely. My distraction was an American main character that cannot grasp the difference in money from Ireland and Britain, but continuously uses the British terms for things:
car park
straight away
different to
use of plural verb for group.
I read this on kindle, which is difficult for me. I like a book that I can more easily thumb back through. I know that kindle fans will tell me that I can do this, but I will never read enough this way to be comfortable. I am looking forward to the next book, and hoping I can get it in book form.
Wondering if Gerard would be better served by an American editor, or if I missed something about Con's use of terms an grammar. May just be that I am too distracted by little things.
car park
straight away
different to
use of plural verb for group.
I read this on kindle, which is difficult for me. I like a book that I can more easily thumb back through. I know that kindle fans will tell me that I can do this, but I will never read enough this way to be comfortable. I am looking forward to the next book, and hoping I can get it in book form.
Wondering if Gerard would be better served by an American editor, or if I missed something about Con's use of terms an grammar. May just be that I am too distracted by little things.
April 22, 2014
This was a fun book to read. It is a fast-paced book, with a lot of things going on. It took me to Ireland, then Turkey, then back to the US, always wondering what was really the true story. One of those types of books that makes you wonder the entire time, and also, it made me question some things up until the end. The main character wasn't my favorite, because he was always so down on himself, but then things start to snap together and everything becomes clearer. Or does it? :)
Basically, a fun and engaging book, that takes you up and down on a rollercoaster ride!
Fun read, not my usual type of book, but fun nonetheless! Thanks Mr. Gerard Cappa for asking me to read it! :D
Basically, a fun and engaging book, that takes you up and down on a rollercoaster ride!
Fun read, not my usual type of book, but fun nonetheless! Thanks Mr. Gerard Cappa for asking me to read it! :D
April 12, 2014
Having received this novel as a free ebook, my expectations were not high. Boy, was I wrong! This is one of the best thrillers I have read in years. I rarely award five stars but this one certainly deserves that rating.The novel is in the first person; Con is the narrator. Con seems to be one screwed up bad ass in the first part of this novel. But as the plot progressed I concluded that Con was one of the sanest characters who is led by others to think he is off his rocker with PTSD resulting from his service in Iraq. Since his return Con's life has been off the rails, to put it mildly. Then he is recruited to go to the family home in Ireland and from there to Turkey to report the death of his best friend Ferdia.
Upon his arrival in Belfast en route to the Irish Republic Con's adventures begin as he is thrown in jail by the Belfast police.Upon his release he is ordered back to the States by a chap from the American embassy in Ireland. Con ignores that direction and proceeds to visit Ferdia's Mom who is also the only mom he has really known. She is one crazy broad but this only becomes clear in the final scenes of the book. In between Con has been to Turkey where the pace speeds up rapidly. Bodies are left in his wake including some who befriended him as well as those trying to kill him. While in Istanbul Con discovers that Ferdia, who is alive, is caught up in a plot to stage a terrorist incident in New York that will be attributed to Iran and is anticipated
to provoke an American invasion of Iran before the Iranians can complete their development of nuclear weapons. Some of the plotters are Israelis aided by some senior American officials who conspire to propel the US into a war against Iran.
The pace becomes even more heated when Con returns to New York determined to save Feerdia by thwarting the plot. The list of characters and machinations mushroom. Can Con save the day? It looks doubtful.....
Based on this fast-paced intricate thriller Gerard Cappa deserves elevation to the top rank of thriller writers.
I highly recommend the review by John Gaynard (below)
Upon his arrival in Belfast en route to the Irish Republic Con's adventures begin as he is thrown in jail by the Belfast police.Upon his release he is ordered back to the States by a chap from the American embassy in Ireland. Con ignores that direction and proceeds to visit Ferdia's Mom who is also the only mom he has really known. She is one crazy broad but this only becomes clear in the final scenes of the book. In between Con has been to Turkey where the pace speeds up rapidly. Bodies are left in his wake including some who befriended him as well as those trying to kill him. While in Istanbul Con discovers that Ferdia, who is alive, is caught up in a plot to stage a terrorist incident in New York that will be attributed to Iran and is anticipated
to provoke an American invasion of Iran before the Iranians can complete their development of nuclear weapons. Some of the plotters are Israelis aided by some senior American officials who conspire to propel the US into a war against Iran.
The pace becomes even more heated when Con returns to New York determined to save Feerdia by thwarting the plot. The list of characters and machinations mushroom. Can Con save the day? It looks doubtful.....
Based on this fast-paced intricate thriller Gerard Cappa deserves elevation to the top rank of thriller writers.
I highly recommend the review by John Gaynard (below)
May 9, 2014
This book impressed me with its excellent writing and exciting narrative. I loved the references to New York City and Irish aspects of American history. References to the Irish Brigade (69th New York) permeate throughout the book, which I thought worked well. The characters seemed convincingly rooted in the history of the 69th, with the 150th anniversary of the Irish Brigade's assault at Fredericksburg playing a significant role in the book's plot.
I particularly enjoyed these references because I read extensively about New York history while living in NYC, have visited Fredericksburg, and am descended from Irish Americans who were conscripted into the Union Army during the Civil War (granted, there's probably tens of millions of Americans with that lineage, so maybe not the most unique claim to family history). I enjoyed how the author brought much of that history to life through the recollections of his characters and their interactions.
I found the book's dialogue realistic and compelling, and I thought the author zeroed in on the interesting details of his characters (e.g., an engraving on a lighter--quick details that tell a lot of backstory without getting bogged down in extensive description). I found the author's writing style to be excellent. The characters were vivid (for example, the Turkish/gypsy Didar).
Maybe because the book involves so many Celtic references, the quick tangents into the supernatural (the dream in Turkey in the middle of the book, and the Sarah character in general) fit in well.
The book covers much ground: New York, Belfast, and Turkey, with appearances by numerous different security forces like the British and Israelis. It's a significant time commitment to read and has a pretty high body count, but it's an exciting story and it delivers at the end. I think this book will find the wide audience it deserves.
I particularly enjoyed these references because I read extensively about New York history while living in NYC, have visited Fredericksburg, and am descended from Irish Americans who were conscripted into the Union Army during the Civil War (granted, there's probably tens of millions of Americans with that lineage, so maybe not the most unique claim to family history). I enjoyed how the author brought much of that history to life through the recollections of his characters and their interactions.
I found the book's dialogue realistic and compelling, and I thought the author zeroed in on the interesting details of his characters (e.g., an engraving on a lighter--quick details that tell a lot of backstory without getting bogged down in extensive description). I found the author's writing style to be excellent. The characters were vivid (for example, the Turkish/gypsy Didar).
Maybe because the book involves so many Celtic references, the quick tangents into the supernatural (the dream in Turkey in the middle of the book, and the Sarah character in general) fit in well.
The book covers much ground: New York, Belfast, and Turkey, with appearances by numerous different security forces like the British and Israelis. It's a significant time commitment to read and has a pretty high body count, but it's an exciting story and it delivers at the end. I think this book will find the wide audience it deserves.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 23, 2012
I'm inbetween 3 and 4 stars with this one. I did really like it (hence the 4 stars) and the themes in the book have stayed with me when not reading it, leaving me thinking about the ideas and descriptions that the author presented (always a sign of a good book). What gives it the drop is the need for editing, which would power this book into a real gem. It's a good thriller and I can see it being made into a solid movie (especially with that great line at the end!).
Cappa is s strong, intelligent writer with a lot of potential, who needs an editor's pushing. A few minor but consistent typographical errors (sentences starting uncapitalized, etc), huge overuse of comma spliced sentences, and some confusion muddling a cracking plot were rough edges that needed smoothing.
That said, this was a great read, strong and interesting characters that you wanted to find out more about. A lot packed into this break-necked paced novel - Cappa could have taken a quarter of the plot going on here and still had a decent thriller just looking at that; there's almost 3 novels happening here!
If you like contemporary war thrillers, you'll really enjoy this; Con, the lead character, is a very masculine voice, conflicted and chasing his ghosts through worlds of confusion.
I'm looking forward to Cappa's other books!
Cappa is s strong, intelligent writer with a lot of potential, who needs an editor's pushing. A few minor but consistent typographical errors (sentences starting uncapitalized, etc), huge overuse of comma spliced sentences, and some confusion muddling a cracking plot were rough edges that needed smoothing.
That said, this was a great read, strong and interesting characters that you wanted to find out more about. A lot packed into this break-necked paced novel - Cappa could have taken a quarter of the plot going on here and still had a decent thriller just looking at that; there's almost 3 novels happening here!
If you like contemporary war thrillers, you'll really enjoy this; Con, the lead character, is a very masculine voice, conflicted and chasing his ghosts through worlds of confusion.
I'm looking forward to Cappa's other books!
January 25, 2016
All a bit unbelievable, and the main character is over the top. Finished it, but won't be rushing back to read the next in the series. On to something I hope I enjoy somewhat more.
March 4, 2017
Never mind review.........
Really a disappointment reading.
Really a disappointment reading.
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