SOURCE: "A Land of Password," in Commonweal, Vol. CXVIII, No. 1, January 11, 1991, pp. 24-5.

In the following review, Gromer criticizes Moore's use of "stick figures, stock figures" in Lies of Silence, which she considers a "tautly told" yet insubstantial thriller.

"Whatever you say say nothing," the title of a poem in Seamus Heaney's 1975 volume North, could serve as apt epigraph for Brian Moore's new novel, Lies of Silence, which takes him—perhaps as reluctantly as his main character—back to Belfast, his birthplace.

For the lies that Moore sees raging in Ulster, "lies told over the years to poor Protestant working people about the Catholics, lies to poor Catholic working people about the Protestants, lies from parliaments and pulpits, lies at rallies and funeral orations"—are not only sins of commission, but at their worst, they are lies of silence, the lies that come of saying nothing, and sins...