High Dive

Starred review from November 9, 2015
"You had to remember you were at war.” This is what Dan, an IRA volunteer in Belfast, tells himself in March, 1984, not long after his 24th birthday, which was also the day he found out he would be planting a bomb intending to kill Margaret Thatcher and as many members of her cabinet as possible. In September of that same year, an actual slow-release time bomb did explode at the Grand Hotel, in Brighton, England, killing five people but missing the prime minister. That explosion is the real-life event at the heart of this brilliant, urgent, unstoppable novel, Lee’s first to be released in the U.S. Having second and even third thoughts about the mission, Dan reckons with himself: “The truth was that on an operation you felt clean of guilt and will. It was day-to-day Belfast life that made you dirty.” Interspersed with Dan’s mounting internal struggles and resolve are the lives of Freya Finch and her father, who’s called Moose, both of whom work at the Grand Hotel and are busy getting ready for the prime minister’s arrival. Freya has just graduated from high school and is restless and uncertain. Her father’s in a similar position, though it’s the middle-aged version, in which he’s grappling with the limitations of his health, his appeal to women, and his ability to understand his newly adult daughter. From its breathless first scene, in which the IRA “interviews” Dan at age 18, testing his instincts and intuition, to seeing Freya and Moose navigating the mundane tasks of everyday service work (the reader knowing all the while just how precarious their lives are), this is an incredible novel of rare insight, velocity, depth, and daring. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates.

Starred review from January 1, 2016
Two absorbing narrative lines follow an imagined perpetrator and potential victims in the 1984 bombing that targeted Margaret Thatcher and other Conservative Party notables meeting at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England. Lee (Who Is Mr Satoshi, 2010, etc.) uses few historical characters as his story toggles within a fictional trio: Dan, an accomplice to the bombing; the hotel's deputy manager, nicknamed Moose; and his feisty daughter, Freya. After initiation into the Provisional Irish Republican Army at 18, Dan is shown briefly working on smaller "ops" but mainly sharing with his widowed mother a fairly normal life in Northern Ireland. His role in the bombing begins when he checks into the hotel and offers cover for an IRA explosives expert. Moose is caught up in preparations for the Conservative Party conference that will have Margaret Thatcher and Cabinet members staying at the Grand. If it goes off well, so to speak, he expects to become the general manager. The divorced father worries about Freya, 18, who is marking time before college with a job on the hotel's front desk, finding and losing a beau, and fighting with or fretting over her dad. The fragile normalcy of these lives on both sides of the Irish Sea is nicely conveyed, with smaller points of tension adding to the reader's anticipation of the known climax, such as Dan's sense of a growing threat to his home and mother or Moose's loss of managerial control when he suffers a heart attack. The bomb itself is the main slow-burning fuse of suspense, detonated late in the tale. As one character says of movies, "sometimes the before is more interesting than the after." Lee's writing has a marked freshness, his pacing and dialogue are exceptional, and every scene is deftly handled. This is a real craftsman at work.

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February 15, 2016

British writer/editor Lee's American debut seamlessly mixes historic events with fictional actors to create a tense and intricate novel centered on the Grand Brighton Hotel, an iconic example of Victorian seaside resort luxury and itself a character in the book. Deputy general manager Philip "Moose" Finch is busily preparing for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's visit for the 1984 Conservative Party Conference when he is felled by a heart attack; daughter Freya works the front desk, while explosives expert Dan slips in as a hotel guest, assigned to carry out the IRA's most ambitious attack to date. The narrative moves back and forth from Brighton and accounts of Moose's past to gritty, divided Belfast and the abuse Dan's family suffered under the British. The author skillfully balances our sympathies for these three characters with deft touches of humor and workplace foibles alongside the major events of history. VERDICT Lee's softening of political context and nuance in favor of the Finch family drama may make this work more welcome with readers on this side of the pond, who are removed from the events depicted. Anglophiles, Hibernophiles, and historical fiction fans hungry for a dash of action and political intrigue should all find much to keep them enthralled.--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016
Lee's third novel draws on the real-life 1984 IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, where the Tory Party was holding a conference. The intent was to assassinate Margaret Thatcher, but she survived. Lee relays events through the perspectives of three fictional characters: Dan, a 24-year-old Belfaster, recruited by the IRA when he was 18, and high-schooler Freya Finch and her father, nicknamed Moose, who work at the hotel. In between the tense scenes of the bomb plot and its preparations, Lee slows the pace to take an in-depth look at the father-daughter relationship. Moose, a former swimming star, is dealing with disappointment at midlife: the failure of his marriage, the banality of his job, and his inability to begin a new relationship. Freya is at loose ends, unsure about attending college, feeling the absence of her mother, and concerned about her father, especially after he suffers a heart attack. Finding humor in unexpected places and elevating the preciousness of life even in mundane moments, Lee tells a completely absorbing story, finding the humanity in each of his flawed characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)