Summary

Stuart Neville begins Chapter 1 of The Ghosts of Belfast by introducing the reader to Gerry Fegan as he sat in a bar in Belfast, hoping that if he drank enough he would be left alone by the twelve spirits that hovered in the peripheries of his consciousness. He needed to drink enough to pass out before the spirits could start screaming, as they always did right as he attempted to fall asleep. He stared at the spirits: Five soldiers (three British and two Irish Ulster Defense Regimentals), an Ulster Constabulary cop, two Loyalist fighters, and four civilians: A butcher whose shop he had bombed, a mother and child who had been entering the shop, and a young boy he had killed with a pistol. He had killed all of them.

Michael McKenna, a friend of his from the old days, appeared behind Fegan...