Joshua Piven's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I was on somewhat of a “history of the IRA” kick this year (that’s the Irish Republican Army, not the Inflation Reduction Act!). I read a review of There Will Be Fire (ominously titled Killing Thatcher in the UK) in The New Yorker and picked up a copy.

The book is history that reads like a novel. It traces the story of IRA operatives who, in 1984, planted a massive bomb at a UK beach resort that just barely missed killing the UK Prime Minister (and her husband) while killing or injuring many others and destroying most of the historic building.

I had never even heard of this incident—and indeed, that’s part of Carroll’s tale, that much of it has been lost to history.

The book works on many levels: as political history, as a detective story, as an examination of the evolution of the IRA and its tactics, as a time-capsule of Britain as it was bombed repeatedly during the Troubles, and as a counter-factual: how might the UK government been have been different had Thatcher died? And, in fact, how was she (and it) changed after the bombing?

This novel sparked my initial interest in learning more about the history of the IRA.

It’s a well-told tale of a group of Irish nationalists (or criminals/terrorists, depending on your point of view) who hatch a complex plot to take over St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City (with hostages, naturally) on St. Patrick’s Day—and the detectives trying to stop them.

While some of the language is a bit dated (it was published in 1981) with the expected stereotypes and so on, the story is well-plotted, the characters are well-drawn and their motivations plausible, and, best of all, the minute detail about the interior of the cathedral is believable.

The infighting among the various branches of law enforcement and local politicians is also very well done and entirely accurate: mostly, they want to avoid blame.

As someone who does a lot of research about survival situations, I love a good heist book, and this is one of the best I’ve come across recently.

I’d of course read many of Connelly’s other books, but this is his first and, in my opinion, one of the best.

Starting with the discovery of a body, stuffed in a drainpipe, in a remote corner of Los Angeles, what appears to be a standard whodunit turns into a complexly plotted mystery that connects Vietnam vets, drugs, a gang of professional thieves and, yes, a bank job.

This is the first Harry Bosch book, and if you’re a fan, this origination story is well worth reading: Bosch recognizes the dead man and is drawn in on a personal level, dealing with his own Vietnam demons as he begins to unravel the mystery.