Slicing apples for a pie, Tessa Ryan tenses, realizing the fruit's variety--Northern Spy--has a double meaning. Apple or counterterrorist? In Flynn Berry's suspenseful third novel (following Under the Harrow and A Double Life), Tessa and her family live an outwardly normal life in Northern Ireland, knowing violence can erupt at any moment, and people are not always who they seem to be.
Sisters Tessa and Marian have always been close. Born near Belfast as "the Troubles" were ending, they live a bus ride apart, Tessa with her infant in a bucolic coastal village and Marian in the city. Years after the Good Friday Agreement declaring peace, Northern Ireland is still divided: "We were living in a tinderbox," Tessa says. They consider themselves Irish, not British, but are pointedly apolitical. So, when TV footage shows Marian in an IRA robbery, Tessa is incredulous. Was she kidnapped? Is she IRA? Tessa's first-person point of view heightens the sense of anxiety as she grapples with questions, then truth, then choices. She joins shop customers scrambling at the sound of a car accident that sounds like a bomb; eventually, she learns of a co-worker's double life.
A BBC television journalist, she is well aware of politics, but her priority is baby Finn. Marian pressures Tessa to take an active role, and Tessa wonders if she is "standing in the way of the rebellion." Pulled deeper into the conflict, the sisters remain loyal to each other, as the juxtaposition of deadly strife and ordinary life propels this tense, simmering thriller to its unexpected conclusion. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.