Following the carbomb killing of his wife while visiting Belfast in the Spring of 1998, American Mick McKenna is unwillingly flung headfirst into a world where the line between good and evil blurs beneath the haze of an 800-year old Irish struggle for peace and freedom. After witnessing a brutal murder, Mick is taken hostage and forced to choose between saving the life of an innocent Irish beauty and stopping an assassination plot that threatens to derail the signing of an agreement which will pave the way for freedom in Northern Ireland. Mick must fight against time, an IRA splinter group, and even the FBI, in an epic battle that will leave him and the nation of Ireland changed forever. " ...a taut thriller. " - Kirkus Reviews " Rich in its historical Irish backdrop while delivering the genre goods." - Kirkus Reviews "...a tense and climatic thriller ...catapulting readers into a dangerous world filled with unexpected twists that will leave them breathless." - BeachBoundBooks " ...deeply emotional characters that connect to the reader. Brendan Sean Sullivan may well have carved himself out a new genre: the humanistic thriller." - Shawn Kerivan, Author, Name the Boy BeachBoundBooks.com Interview with IRISH BLOOD author Brendan Sean Sullivan BBB : What inspired you to become a writer?  BS : As a kid, I always loved movies and television, especially things that had to do with intrigue, crime, suspense, mystery, espionage, etc... anything with action really.  I was always drawn to stories with unexpected twists and turns but which also had characters who bore their souls and showed their human side.  Also, I read a lot of George Orwell - his characters always resonated with me, especially how they always struggled with society, our institutions, governments, and their own thoughts and beliefs.  As an adult, I read anything from crime, to espionage, to terrorism, to history to war novels, and these subjects often got my mind swirling with ideas - to the point that I would daydream stories, turning them back and forward in my head over and over again. Eventually, I started to jot down ideas and themes for books and short stories. BBB : How did you come up with the idea for your book, Irish Blood?  BS : I wanted to write an action packed thriller that wasn't the typical murder, spy, detective, mystery story that had been repackaged over and over again a thousand times.  Irish Blood came about because I had kind of a different background than most people, which gave me a unique perspective and story to tell. I was born in Belfast and my parents left for the United States in 1970, when I was two years old. My family life was vastly different than most of the people in my neighborhood. We lived in a row home in Philadelphia like a lot of other people but my parents always kept us really close to our Irish roots and a lot of very interesting Irish characters. My brother, my sister, and I all grew up with an incredible sense of Irish pride and were raised to believe that we were different - not better than others - but different in the way we viewed our connection to Ireland - to never forget the struggles going on at "home" as my parents called it.  Although  Irish Blood is a fast-paced fictional thriller set in Ireland and America in the late 90's, many of the events that take place in this book are loosely based on my own experiences or those of people I came across in my life growing up as an Irish kid in the US.  Most of the characters are based on individuals I met first hand, was told about, or read about since I was a young boy.   In addition, I wanted my story to touch on Irish American sympathies for "The Troubles" in Ireland, and the interplay between the FBI and those suspected of running guns to the IRA from the US in the 1980s and 1990s. It was important to me that the story also subtly revealed the transformation of Northern Ireland over the last fifty years, without hitting the reader over the head with a history lesson. I have been back to Ireland three times since I left and each time I came back with a different perspective.  At age five, I was an innocent and clueless child led around by hand in a war torn land. Oddly, I still have memories of that. When I was fifteen, my parents took me to Belfast again and I returned to the US, rebellious and enamored with the IRA, totally enthralled by anything involved with the fight for Irish freedom.  Just a few years ago, when I was forty, I took my own family back to Ireland and returned to a country that seemed newly healed due to the vision of men convinced that open discourse rather than violence could bring about peace.  These trips influenced me a great deal and sort of compelled me to write the book. BBB : Tell us about your main character, Mick McKenna.  BS : We meet Mick McKenna on what is probably the most horrible day of his life - the day he buries his wife, Sarah.  The book begins by telling the story of Sarah's d