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Your undercover operation is blown before you get to San Francisco. What next? If you're Orpen, you join the cops. Sort of.
It's the Fall of 1883. Irish revolutionaries are changing the face of London with American dynamite, and not in a good way. Irish-born London Metropolitan Police Sergeant, Robert Emmet Orpen is sent, badly disguised as a tourist, to San Francisco to prevent at least some of the explosives getting into the wrong hands. He realizes that he may be out of his depth when his cover is blown before he even gets as far as the west coast. Now what does he do? First, he charms his way onto the San Francisco police force, where he is assigned to the coattails of a cynical, 'larger than life' Civil War veteran (from the losing side). Then he finds himself caught up in a murder involving one of the two violent Irish factions vying for supremacy in one of the most Irish of American cities. Orpen is going to wish he never heard of the murderous Knights of the Red Branch.
About the author
Myles Dungan is an Irish writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin and was the recipient of a Fulbright Award to the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. He is the author of more than a dozen books on Irish and American history (including
Four Killings, Conspiracy: Irish Political Trials, Irish Voices from the Great War, How the Irish Won the West and
Land is all that matters). He is also the author of two works for children,
The Great Irish History Book and
The Forgettables.
The Red Branch is his first solo effort as a fiction writer. He has high hopes that it will not be his last.
