Terrible Angel — Dermot McEvoy

"Terrible Angel is a novel so intriguing you'll keep turning the pages."
-Frank McCourt, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela's Ashes

"Terrible Angel is literally a marvelous novel. No novel could be more Irish or more American."
-Pete Hamill, author of Snow in August and A Drinking Life

On August 22, 1922, Michael Collins was assassinated at Beal na mBlath in County Cork. The charismatic Collins was 31 years old and the leader of the Irish Free State. In the previous six years he had been busy: He fought in the 1916 Easter Rebellion, invented the IRA, financed the new Irish state, assassinated the entire British Secret Service in Dublin, and negotiated the treaty that drove the British out of twenty-six counties of Ireland for the first time in 700 years.
Terrible Angel, Dermot McEvoy's suspenseful and lightning-paced romp through New York's streets, finds Collins 70 years after his bloody death desperately seeking to make amends for his violent life by completing one last worldly mission: springing a wrongly accused Irishman from the clutches of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the British MI-5, and a certain life sentence in a British jail.
You'll meet a cast of characters that entertains, frightens, and amazes: Tommy Butler-a 275-pound bartender at Greenwich Village's famed Lion's Head saloon who can tell a tale and handle a thug with equal ease. Earl Holder-a retired black detective first grade, NYPD, with a nose for intelligence and a passion for justice. Sadie Robinson-a homeless woman who becomes Collins's guide to a grimy underworld that few New Yorkers ever see. Naomi Ottinger-the sexy Village bartender who knows what she wants, and she wants Michael Collins. Quentin Quinney-a double-dealing detective in NYPD's intelligence unit who's after Collins's head. Sir Ian Boxer-Clegg-chief of MI-5's Belfast Division, with a penchant for the more exotic things in life, be they fine wines, young boys, or fugitive Fenians.