At 2:54 a.m. on Friday October 12, 1984, an active service unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated an explosive device on the sixth floor of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and senior members of her government were in the hotel attending their annual party conference. The device had been placed behind a bath panel in room 629 a month earlier, and was irrefutably the most destructive single assault on the government since the attempt to blow up Parliament 380 years earlier. The object was to wipe out most of the British government, which was uncharacteristically, in a single location, (The Times, Friday, October 12, 1984).

Ten years later, in April 1994, the trial of six members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army was heard in Tucson, Arizona. The six were indicted for conspiracy to purchase explosives and weapons for use by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

This story is based on those two incidents and involves two characters: an Irishman who was one of the gang convicted for the Grand Hotel bombing, and a former British Police officer who had been on the Thatcher security detail. Their paths cross again in Northern Mexico with horrendous results, and the former policeman goes on a rampage.

About the Author: This is the first novel by Keith Roberts, a former guardsman in Her Majesty’s Brigade of Guards. After retiring from the British Police, he immigrated to the USA. I grew up in Coventry, an industrial city in the middle of England, and now live the cowboy life in Tucson, Arizona, with three horses, three dogs, and the occasional rattlesnake.

Publisher’s website: http: //sbprabooks.com/KeithRoberts