Book review: High Dive

JONATHAN LEE’s third novel is a fictional account of the Brighton bombing of 1984, when the IRA attempted to assassinate Margaret Thatcher during the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel.

Belfast man Dan checks into the Grand Hotel three weeks before the conference is due to take place, signing in as ‘Roy Walsh’ — the pseudonym used by Patrick Magee, who appears in the novel as Dan’s co-conspirator and who was later convicted of the Brighton Bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment.

At the reception desk, Dan meets Freya, the daughter of the hotel’s deputy general manager Philip ‘Moose’ Finch.