Undertow - Softcover

Tom-foote

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1897648936 ISBN 13: 9781897648933

Publisher: Salmon Publishing Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

Book by Wall, William, Foote, Tom

About this title

From the Back Cover

Rammed and sunk by a mysterious merchant ship off the West coast of Ireland, Jim Prendergast survives the sinking of his yacht, Larinita, but his wife and daughter are drowned. The tragedy comes to the attention of Jonathan Cooke, a shadowy figure in the British Embassy in Dublin, who suspects that the merchant ship was transporting weapons for a maverick IRA unit who are planning to derail the peace talks with one final act of terror. Manipulated by MI6, Prendergast is dragged unwittingly into a world of intrigue that indirectly leads him to the man responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter until he is finally able to reap his revenge in a violent and bloody confrontation on the high seas.

From Kirkus Reviews

Routine but absorbing debut nautical thriller about a seasoned salt who avenges the death of his family by infiltrating an IRA terrorist cell, from an Irishman who knows his surf. During a bad storm off the picturesque Connemara coast, Jim Prendergast's sailboat is deliberately destroyed by an unmarked vessel that, we quickly learn, is smuggling weapons for the IRA. Prendergast, 48, a retired Merchant Navy captain, survives but loses his wife and daughter. Foote, who writes with easy authority on matters both nautical and Irish, introduces a mixed bag of homicidal terrorists (including the de rigeur beautiful but lethal femme fatale) loosely affiliated with the IRA. Their apparent leader, Foster, a psychopathic Catholic who makes the sign of the cross over his victims after he murders them, is hired by the Libyans to sabotage an imminent meeting of world leaders on Irish soilamong them Sein Fein leader Gerry Adams, England's Prime Minister, and America's President. Meanwhile, to assuage his grief, Prendergast agrees to captain an aging rustbucket from Galway to a scrapyard, unaware that his employer has links to MI-6, whose shadowy upper-class executive, Jonathan Cooke, shamelessly manipulates Prendergast into Foster's group. There are few surprises in Foote's triple-cross plotting, or in his cinematic, blood-spurting violence. He also undercuts his worthy subtextthat the lust for revenge makes one prey for larger schemers who care nothing for human lifewhen, at the end, he forces Prendergast into a standard kill-or-be-killed confrontation with Foster. Still, the storys ho-hum plot is supported by taut writing, strong detail, and an unusual compassion for a bunch of mixed-up Irishmen too angry to know that they're their own worst enemies: a satisfying, above-average page-turner for Forsythe and Higgins fans. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Salmon Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1897648936
• ISBN 13: 9781897648933
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 72