Cycle of Violence

Book excerpt: Miller's ever-so-smart aleck mouth has earned him a disciplinary transfer from his downtown Belfast beat to Crossmaheart, a beleaguered and depressed outpost where the preferred response to murder is a hilarious one-liner. Miller is replacing a reporter who has disappeared - to no one's great surprise in this postterrorist ghetto full of leftover guns, plentiful whiskey, and a secret more sordid than the locals' resumes of political "activism". Crossmaheart is a notoriously fatal place in which to ask questions, and Miller is determined to forgo his professional curiosity, to compromise his journalist's integrity in the interest of staying alive. He is particularly intent on keeping himself clear of whatever involvements caused the job opening at the Crossmaheart Chronicle in the first place. But once he falls for his predecessor's troubled girlfriend, Marie - a former Catholic schoolgirl to complement Miler's own Protestant heritage - his plan begins to fall apart.