Mortal Causes

Acknowledgements

A lot of people helped me with this book. I'd like to thank the people of Northern Ireland for their generosity and their `crack'. Particular thanks need to go to a few people who can't be named or wouldn't thank me for naming them. You know who you are.

Thanks also to: Colin and Liz Stevenson, for trying, Gerald Hammond, for his gun expertise; the Officers of the City of Edinburgh Police and Lothian and Borders Police, who never seem to mind me telling stories about them; David and Pauline, for help at the Festival.

The best book on the subject of Protestant paramilitaries is Professor Steve Bruce's The Red Hand (OUP, 1992). One quote from the book: `There is no "Northern Ireland problem" for which there is a solution. There is only a conflict in which there must be winners and losers.’

The action of Mortal Causes takes place in a fictiionallsed summer, 1993, before the Shankill Road bombing and its bloody aftermath.