The Seventh Man: and other stories

'The Seventh Man' is one of the 13 stories in this book by John Devine. This story is about a man named in a newspaper as one of seven men killed in the SAS ambush of an IRA brigade. The leaked security force list it used was wrong. Six men died. The named man didn't die, because he wasn't there. He is now suing the paper for mega compensation for trashing his name and reputation and endangering his life by wrongly linking him with the IRA. The newspaper, defending itself, must find out how he came to be named, by whom and why. There is an unexpected twist in the tail of this tale.

'Confirmation Day' has a hilarious cast of people assembled by happenstance who experience a day they will never forget. Few readers will ever have had such a day.

'The Mission' has hell's fire, brimstone, death and holy purity in abundance, but there is an undercurrent innocently trying to clarify where exactly women stand in the Catholic church.

'The Black Babies' is more than about gathering money for the foreign missions and touches on the fragility of human relationships from earliest days.

In 'Roddy Meets Old Mother Riley', the recreational often weekly violence occurring on GAA pitches across Ireland, which officially never happens, is explored and where the language is coarse.

'Trudy' is a tender story of teenage love across Northern Ireland's divide and how it doesn't exist if people are determined enough not to let it.

And there are more stories . . .