The Killing Frost - Hardcover

Hayden, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312070101 ISBN 13: 9780312070106

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1992

Synopsis

On a ship returning to England, four men--aging rebel Myles Burke; Alexander Carew, out to crush the Irish cause; scheming journalist William Durkin; and Con Gallagher, returning to reclaim his patrimony and his woman--are drawn into the Easter Rebellion

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Dublin advertising executive Hayden's posthumous first novel re-creates the gritty human passions and longings behind Ireland's 1916 Easter Rebellion--a dense, gloomy, and ultimately captivating novel more than a decade in the making. It is early in the 20th century, and Europe is gearing up for the horrors of WW I, when British Intelligence officer Alec Carew is dispatched to Dublin to investigate rumors that the Irish Republican Brotherhood may be conspiring against England with the Germans. The IRB, founded 60 years earlier and funded largely by donations from homesick Irish-Americans, has reportedly dissipated in the face of England's promise to grant Ireland Home Rule. But the somber, withdrawn Carew soon learns that clandestine activities are indeed afoot and enlists a loudmouthed scandal-sheet publisher, William Durkin, to seek out the identities and plans of the ringleaders. Hoping for knighthood, Durkin willingly betrays his compatriots to please the English, going so far as to ghostwrite books and pamphlets for them and offer his editorial space for their use. But Durkin's discoveries lead Carew to realize that one IRB hotbed is all too close to home: the personal servant of Carew's own uncle, a Protestant landowner in Carewstown, has been conspiring with the local schoolmaster and others to provide arms for the IRB. World War I begins; Home Rule is snatched away, resulting in increased support for the IRB; Dublin dockworkers rise up against their British taskmasters; panicking Anglo-Irish Protestants form their own militia; and Carew's fate becomes inextricably entwined with those of his tempestuous enemies as the Irish struggle in the face of infiltration, betrayal, and unceasing bad luck to throw off the bonds of British rule. Dark, moody, action-packed--a memorable tale. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Four very different Irishmen, each steering his separate course into the conflagration of the 1916 Easter Rebellion, animate this convincing, posthumously published first novel. Con Gallagher, the proud, rugged son of a tenant farmer, returns to rural Carewstown to have his revenge on the land-hungry bullies who burned his house and drove him out years earlier. Alec Carew, a British intelligence officer and heir to the dwindling estate of Gallagher's former landlord, seeks to quash the rebellious Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the promise of knighthood induces loutish William Durkin, the affluent publisher of a Dublin scandal sheet, to help Carew. Meanwhile aged Myles Burke, a hero of both the Fenian uprisings and the American Civil War, rejoins the rebels as much to die gloriously as to keep his cause alive. Although Hayden's prose waxes theatrical at times, generally it suits the bloody period chronicled here, successfully evoking the rat-infested slums of Dublin, decaying Carewscourt manor, the gore of battle. And Hayden, a native of Dublin who died in 1989, dextrously allows politics to proceed from the circumstances and personalities of his characters, rather than vice versa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0312070101
• ISBN 13: 9780312070106
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 534