Irish Truth
The Truth Commissioner, David Park, 2008
Belfast Peace Wall 
Novel by talented writer largely unknown outside Ireland is unusual for detailing four protagonists.
Henry Stanfield is a lawyer specializing in international criminal justice (war crimes). His considerable reputation leads to his personal selection by the prime minister of Ireland to be the Truth Commissioner in the upcoming truth and reconciliation proceedings meant to bring some closure to the endless cycles of hatred, violence, and revenge that has crippled northern Ireland for so long. Henry and his team of young, able assistance heads to South Africa for training in the methods of the reconciliation process. A South African judge has been retained to hear the trials in which participants are guaranteed immunity from prosecution if they tell the truth. Henry is a widower with an estranged daughter who blames his serial infidelities for her mother’s early death of cancer.
Belfast Courthouse 
Gilroy is a former high level official in the IRA with a lot of blood on his hands. In the new Ireland he has been appointed, ironically, minister for children and culture. He and his long time sidekick (consigliere) are paranoid in the extreme imagining every office and conference room they enter to be bugged and go to great measures to alter their routines and movements to throw off the assassins they assume follow them everywhere. As if the pressure to simply stay alive isn’t enough Gilroy’s youngest and favorite daughter is about to be married to a London based hated English accountant.
Toys for Romanian Orphans 
Fenton is a former police officer with a reputation for aggressively pursuing the IRA. He often retained touts (stool pigeons) in his work. The new Ireland is trying to clean up the image of its police force and Fenton has been retired and pensioned off even though he is quite young. He and his wife put off having children because of the danger of his work and it is now too late. Fenton now does charity work, several times driving a van loaded with food, clothing, and toys, from Ireland to an orphanage in Romania.
Florida Lake DeForrest 
Danny is hiding in the Florida lake district as an illegal alien and with an assumed name. He works in maintenance at an expensive private college. He has fallen in love with a colored woman, she is pregnant, and they plan to marry. He has never told the woman the truth about his past. We presume he has a history with the IRA.
The novel concerns the case of a 15 year old petty thief who was forced to tout for the police even though he had no way of obtaining useful information. The IRA discovered this, picked the boy up and he disappeared forever. The boy’s sister now works as assistant to Stanfield’s daughter who is teaching in Belfast. The sister and boy’s mother want to know what happened to the boy and to recover his body for burial. Stanfield’s daughter meets her father who hopes for a reconciliation and he promises to find the truth about the boy.
Stanfield’s assistance do their jobs and summons are issued by the court to compel attendance by the other three protagonists in this story. They even succeed in tracking Danny down in Florida. The Irish government, realizing how explosive this one case is, moves quickly to get the protagonists to coordinate their cover up stories. The government even has obtained photos of Stanfield in an expensive Belfast hotel with an Eastern European prostitute to force his cooperation.
Stanfield writes his letter of resignation to be submitted after the sham hearing on the boy’s case. What will happen? Will the four protagonists all play their role to sweep the case under the rug as the government wants? Entertaining but with insight into northern Ireland after the peace.