SOURCE: "In the Firing Line," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4542, April 20-26, 1990, p. 430.

Deane is an Irish poet, essayist, critic, and educator. In the following negative review of Lies of Silence, he contends that, although there "are few better living novelists than Brian Moore," his representation of the crisis in Northern Ireland is stereotypical and inaccurate.

There are few better living novelists than Brian Moore, but one would find little support for that statement in this book. Since the publication of Catholics in 1972, he has consistently found ways of bringing the secular world into collision with metaphysical or religious phenomena and of allowing the subsequent reverberations to shake the foundations of both. There has always been an investigative, sleuth-like aspect to his writing. We can detect that something is wrong because the symptoms of unease are so marked. The source of the wrong is often found to...