An Irish Murder Mystery

To Irish Republican Army members, they are known as the "security department." Everyone else calls them the "nutting squad" for their habit of putting bullets into people's heads (or "nuts," as they're called in Belfast). By whatever name, this I.R.A. group — charged with maintaining internal security — is feared for its brutality, ruthlessness and familiarity with remote parts of the Irish borderland, where those deemed guilty of passing information to the British are routinely found after nutting. So people on both sides of Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant divide were shocked last week to learn that the nutting squad's deputy commander may...

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