TERRIBLE ANGEL

Publishing veteran McEvoy envisions what would happen if Michael Collins had come back from the dead to travel to New York in the 1990s.

On things that matter, the nuns usually got it right, and it was a lucky break for Irish revolutionary Michael Collins that he remembered the Act of Contrition that the good sisters taught him to recite whenever in danger of death. Murmured with his last breath after rebel forces ambushed him in 1922, it saved Collins from a quick slide to hell and got him into purgatory by the skin of his teeth. But, after 70 years, the heavenly jury is still out: Has he atoned sufficiently for all the killings he committed in the Easter Rising of 1916 and during the civil war that followed? It’s decided that Collins still needs to prove himself, so he’s dispatched to New York with orders to spring one Martin Twomey (falsely accused of IRA activity) from the clutches of the INS, which is about to extradite him to Great Britain (where he will almost certainly be imprisoned for life). If he saves this innocent man without shedding more blood, Collins gets through the pearly gates—otherwise, it’s back to the holding pen. For a man who’s been dead for seven decades, Collins certainly lands on his feet in New York: He makes friends with the bartender at the Lion’s Head, who puts him in touch with the priest who is chaplain to the INS detention center, who gets him in to see Twomey in no time at all. There’s the usual problem of informers, however, and a corrupt NYPD detective who’s in cahoots with British intelligence. But all this is child’s play to someone who outsmarted Winston Churchill.

Formulaic and a bit heavy on location (so many New York bars and shops get mentioned it seems like product placement), but a pleasant and amusing debut even so.