Summary

In Chapter 3, Neville introduces the reader to four men sitting in a pub in Dundalk, just south of the border with Northern Ireland. McSorley, the leader of the group, showed the other three men a picture of their target for a planned burglary: an “elderly man unlocking the door of a post office” (24). He assigned roles in the burglary to the other men, giving himself and Davy Campbell the difficult tasks and snubbing Hughes and Comiskey. While Comiskey and Hughes quibbled over their part in the job, Campbell internally questioned the wisdom of robbing the post office in the first place.

He had joined this group of Republican dissidents only recently, and was suspected by both Hughes and Comiskey. McSorley had trusted the reputation that Campbell had built for himself working in Belfast and had made Campbell his right-hand man. So far, the...