Cross by Austin Duffy review — not worth the Troubles

Austin Duffy is an Irish oncologist who has been writing fiction for the best part of 15 years, mostly in snatches before work. His debut novel, This Living and Immortal Thing (2016), was a quiet story of a disillusioned cancer doctor who leaves Ireland to take up a research job in New York. His second novel, Ten Days (2021), was a subtle exploration of dementia and his third, The Night Interns (2022), was a stylish hospital drama following three trainee medics on a Dublin surgical ward.

So that’s three novels about health, drawn closely from experience — which makes Duffy’s fourth novel a departure. Cross is the story of a tight-knit, hair-trigger, pro-IRA community in Ireland in the run-up to the 1994 ceasefire. And when