Those We Left Behind (DCI Flanagan 1)

Author/Guide: Stuart Neville

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Even if you don’t go looking for the past, sometimes it comes looking for you

ISBN: 978-0099578383
Genre: Crime

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What you need to know before your trail

DCI Serena Flanagan is forced to confront a disturbing case from her past: the murder conviction of a 12-year-old-boy who has just been released from prison

DCI Serena Flanagan hasn’t heard the boy’s name in years. But when she does, she’s not ready for it. Not that she ever would be – it was the name of the 12 year old boy convicted of murdering his step father with his brother.

But now Ciaran Devine is out of prison and back in her life. It’s her job to help him fit back into society. But Serena has always felt as if something wasn’t quite right about the case and that his brother Flanagan was hiding something. Both brothers now free from jail

When Ciaran’s probation officer comes to Flanagan with fresh fears about the Devines, the years of lies begin to unravel, setting a deadly chain of events in motion.

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Travel Guide

Belfast

This is the Belfast which has emerged from ‘The Troubles’ and it’s a still a community at odds with itself. In the novel there is a sense of the paramilitary and the tensions that existed between the police and the community, and within the community themselves.

This is also the background for two foster children who are forced into foster care and who end up in prison for killing their foster father. DCI Serena played an instrumental role in getting them convicted and for her role in siding with one of the brothers. A rookie cop who goes her own way but who now finds herself in danger

Belfast is evoked in detail:

The police station:

The station’s core for example is a “Walled compound containing a cluster of red-brick buildings, small windows , a fortress in the heart of Lisburn”

An estate in Belfast:

“They drove in convoy for half an hour until they reached a sprawling housing estate between Lisburn and Belfast, tricolour flags hanging from lamp posts, murals on the gable walls of houses showing men long dead, their names in Gaelic script”

The streets and the buildings of Lisburn and Belfast are all reminders of what happened all those years ago and what is happening now. All those we left behind is the story of when the past comes looking for you.