They notice him, the sectarian haters who suck whiskey and resentment in Belfast's bars, and they accord respect. Victor Kelly is a young swaggerer, a gifted thug with the flash and cold nerve to force a terrified man of the opposing tribe to his knees, then cut his throat with a filleting knife. Kelly's bunch are Protestants, and the enemy tribe Catholics, though it matters not a Mass or a damn because pure enmity on both sides, cherished and nurtured from childhood, now and forevermore, is the city's religion.
Kelly makes his first kills as a teenager; becomes known; acquires hangers-on,...