by Joe Joyce
Other real people mentioned include Stephen Held, Iseult Stuart (MacBride), leading politicians like Eamon de Valera and Frank Aiken, German diplomats like Eduard Hempel and Henning Thomsen, soldiers like Major General Hugo O’Neill, and other regular visitors to the German legation events. Any details about real people and real events are broadly accurate. However, the party at the German residence to celebrate the fall of France is fiction.
All the main characters in the book and the plotlines are fictitious. People who know a lot about this period may notice some resemblance between the fictitious Hans Harbusch and the real German spy Werner Unland, who never appeared to do anything much, but the plot involving Harbusch and his ‘wife’ is entirely fictitious, as is the character of Eliza.
The number of books about Ireland and its neutrality during the Second World War is growing constantly. Works by Mark Hull, Clair Wills, Eunan O’Halpin, David O’Donoghue, Brian Girvin, John P. Duggan, Joe Carroll, Robert Fisk, and Tony Gray were of great use in giving me a feel for the period, as were the documents on Irish foreign policy published by the Royal Irish Academy and, of course, contemporary newspapers.
I am particularly indebted to Maurice Byrne and Lieutenant-Colonel (retd) Kevin Byrne for their comments on the first draft of this book, and to Commandant Victor Laing, the former head of the Military Archives, for helping me to fill in some period detail. It remains, however, a work of fiction.
My thanks to fellow writer Declan Burke, whose blog Crime Always Pays is the welcoming and generous home of all Irish crime and thriller writing, for guiding me towards Liberties Press and to Seán O’Keeffe and my editor there, Dan Bolger, for his helpful and astute comments.
Also by Joe Joyce
Fiction
The Trigger Man
Off the Record
Non-Fiction
The Guinnesses: The Untold Story of
Ireland’s Most Successful Family
Blind Justice (with Peter Murtagh)
The Boss: Charles J Haughey in Government
(with Peter Murtagh)
Plays
The Tower
www.joejoyce.ie
Copyright
First published in 2013 by
Liberties Press
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Copyright © Joe Joyce, 2013
The author has asserted his moral rights.
ISBN: 978–1–909718–17–3
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
Cover design by Anna Morrison
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