Product Description

When Michael Dillon is ordered by the IRA to park his car in the carpark of a Belfast hotel, he is faced with a moral choice which leaves him absolutely nowhere to turn. He knows that he is planting a bomb that would kill and maim dozens of people. But he also knows that if he doesn't, his wife will be killed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69828 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
This is a novel to mirror the disintegration of our times, the unstated irony of which is that a politics so provincial can breed a writer and an art so universal Observer An armchair time bomb Mail on Sunday A gripping read which ... you will find impossible to put down' Literary Review Very much the thinking person's thriller - utterly tense and riveting, but also posing an acute moral dilemma for an ordinary person caught up in the troubled politics of Northern Ireland Daily Express It insists on being read at a sitting, for it is imperative to know what happens next Financial Times As good as one has come to expect from Brian Moore: the pace never flags; the writing is crisp and taut; the moral crises... are intensely complex and gripping Irish Independent

About the Author
Brian Moore was born in Belfast. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then moved to California. He twice won the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of Arts and Letters. He won the Author's Club First Novel Award for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Great Victorian Collection. The Doctor's Wife, The Colour of Blood - winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the Year - and Lies of Silence were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Five of his novels have been made into films - The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Catholics, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Cold Heaven and Black Robe. Brian Moore died in 1999.

Customer Reviews

Controlled anger, still relevant
To suggest that this is no longer worth reading because the situation in Northern Ireland has changed is a bit like suggesting (say) that 'Richard III' is no longer worth going to see because the Wars of the Roses have ended. Moreover, there are still terrorists around, and there will still be moral dilemmas to be confronted by those unfortunate enough to come into contact with them, even if not in the same way or with the same type of terrorist. The moral dilemma set up in this novel is gripping: the protagonist faces the choice between (it seems to him) his wife being killed by terrorists, or leaving a bomb which will kill many others. The reader is forced to consider his or her likely reaction in similar circumstances. Against a persuasively-realised background, the ordinariness of the terrorists, and the variations in their attitudes, are bleakly and calmly captured. A few Americanisms (from recollection, examples were 'trunk' for boot of a car, 'going to the bathroom') jarred slightly in this realistic work but maybe (although I doubt it) these are also present in Northern Irish speech. Overall this is thoughtful, thought-provoking work, and, while it will do nothing to cheer you up, deserves to be read right to the end.

a book full of truth
This book is easy to read and explain a lots of things people don't know about northern Ireland. Reading it has made me understand how people react face to the IRA

"Lies of Silence" was an action-filled adventure.
I chose to read the book "Lies of Silence," by Brian Moore because of the excellent title. It was well worth the effort. The book was kind of like an action movie, but with a little bit more depth. The dilemma faced by Michael Dillon is as realistic as it could be for a man living in Northern Ireland ten years ago. It was an action-filled adventure that sucks in the reader, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick thrill.