Inkspots Inc. Review of Out of Darkness

Out of Darkness

Rex Owens, author

CKBooks, publisher

Historical fiction, 400 pages

9780983298489, $14.95

Four of four stars

Reviewed by Inkspots Reviews

Complex relationships and human frailties compliment a rich, multilayered cultural, geographical, and political backdrop in Out of Darkness, the second book in Rex Owens’ Murphy series, a deeply rewarding and enlightening exploration of tenuous 1990s peace efforts in Ireland.

Owens brings back Ian Murphy, the conflicted and hard-drinking, yet vulnerable novelist from 2013’s Murphy’s Troubles. He’s joined by a mixed cadre of some familiar and many delightful new characters.

The story picks up in May 1998, soon after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and following a referendum in which citizens of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland vote to keep Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom, and call for an end to decades of violence, including the disarming of paramilitary groups.

Murphy’s abrupt flip-flop in Murphy’s Troubles, from being the longtime author of a secret training manual for the Irish Republican Army to helping to write the Good Friday Agreement, has left him reviled on both sides of the political aisle.

“Because of my work on the Peace Accord, I was considered a hero,” Murphy muses in the first few pages of Out of Darkness.  Yet, “the Provisional IRA announced months ago that I was a traitor for betraying the Cause, which we Irish had shed blood over for the past thirty years. Was it possible for one man to be both?”

But those political issues diminish in importance – at least temporarily -- when Murphy meets Mairin McCarthy, a librarian at University College Cork, where he lectures on Irish literature, history and culture when he’s not writing best-selling novels.

With Mairin at his side, Murphy begins to battle long-neglected demons, including alcoholism and depression. He begins to step away from the reclusiveness that had defined his adult life, and begins to think about his future path, that might include writing his memoir. At the same time, he relishes a closer relationship with his sister and niece, who have relocated from Belfast to Cork.

All of that is potentially shattered, however, when Murphy is asked to perform one more, critical act of service toward peace that would require him to move to Belfast. How he responds to the request could profoundly affect not only the lives of those living in Northern Ireland, but also his own personal destiny and his relationship with Mairin.

Owens demonstrates a masterful command of Irish political history, which while fictionalized is thickly intertwined with real events, such as the August 1998 bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, by the separatist group the Real IRA. The Omagh bomb killed 29 people and injured more than 200 others.

As masterfully, the author strikes a fine line between simplifying the politics enough to hold the interest of those not intimately familiar with them, while infusing enough to hold the interest of those with a deeper passion and understanding.  

The author also, masterfully, breaks up the politics and related intrigue via an abundant, continual interjection of personal, cultural and geographical color, most notably heavy regional references to food and drink, particularly distinguishing between northern and southern Irish tastes.

There are also soul-searching, scenic mountain and seaside hikes, questions about religious redemption, romantic getaways, lots of malt whiskey drinking and exploration of the demons released by Murphy’s incessant consumption of it, hand-mixed pipe tobacco smoked by peat fires, and an understanding of mature love that finally envelops Murphy at the age of forty-eight.

Finally, there are insights that will be most meaningful to fellow writers. “The Peace Accord was my first nonfiction writing, and it would be my last. I lived in a world of fiction that I created, with only the characters I breathed life into keeping my company,” Murphy muses. “My relationship with all my characters we intimate. I understood their history, their motives, what they cared about.”

Like a first-rate Irish stew, Out of Darkness blends all the ingredients necessary for a great politically-inspired novel steeped in danger and intrigue, while also charting one man’s deeply introspective journey toward personal peace. 

With that perfect mix, the Murphy series just keeps getting better.

-Inkspots Reviews