Irish Trouble

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL--Rearden Conner--Morrow ($2.50).

When Irishmen speak of the two years of murder, massacre, ambush and reprisal that marked Ireland's last and most successful rebellion (1919-21), they call it, with resigned racial euphemism, "the trouble." Author Conner's novel, without attempting to give a clear picture of what the various troublemakers were after, makes it quite clear that the trouble itself was desperate, often hellish. Shake Hands with the Devil reads like crude melodrama but Author Conner swears his tale is founded on brutal fact, has needed no embellishment.

Kerry Sutton was a half-English medical student in Dublin, a completely neutral spectator of the guerrilla warfare between the Black & Tans and the Irish Republican Army. But he had the bad luck to witness the bombing of a Black & Tan lorry, and in the subsequent shindy he shot a man in self-defense. After that, the only safety for Kerry was in the I. R. A. After being hidden in a cellar, he was spirited away to Ardfalla, a little village on the coast where the I. R. A. had a gunrunning post, an underground ammunition factory. Then Kerry began to see death. His first ambush was not so bad. The massacre of Black & Tans herded into a cell was worse. When he was a witness of the cold-blooded shooting of pretty Kitty Brady it was nearly too much. But when he was given the pleasant job of guarding beautiful Lady Moira, a hostage, Kerry took a new lease on life.

Kerry fell madly in love with Lady Moira, who reciprocated just enough to keep him hopeful. Then one day when Kerry was down at the village, orders came from headquarters and Lady Moira was taken out and shot. Kerry went hell-for-leather to the nearest Black & Tan post, gave himself up, turned informer. He had the pleasure of seeing his oldtime pals butchered. Finally the Black & Tans tied him up in the underground factory, set a time-bomb ticking.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.