The Ghost Man - Malcolm Haslett - Bog

A stranger moves into an empty house above a remote fishing port in the West of Ireland. The residents know only that he's 'from the North' and is taciturn and moody. Donal, a local man with reputed links to Republican paramilitaries, is especially suspicious. The newcomer is befriended, however, by three people: the young parish priest, Father Brian; a 12-year old lad with learning difficulties called Tony; and Tony's mother Kathleen, grateful for the stranger's kindness to her son. When it's revealed that the man, Mahood, is in fact a former RUC officer, tensions in the village rise. Father Brian, though he believes Mahood's story that he's come there to get over a personal tragedy, pleads with him to leave. But soon they're caught up in a rapid sequence of events which underline the isolated location of the village, the conflict of loyalties between the characters, and the difficulty of building trust between communities divided by centuries of hostility.