Mr Ron Duffy

The Janus Web Mr Ron Duffy

Publisher Marketing: 1978 was Italy's "year of the gun." On 16 March, the BBC reported that the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro "has been kidnapped in Rome. Mr Moro's escort of five police bodyguards were killed when he was snatched at gunpoint from a car near a cafe in the morning rush-hour." As expected, the terrorist group, the Red Brigades, are blamed. But did they do it? Questions swirl around the event in the world's press. When Britain's MI6 are given an opportunity for one of their top spies to infiltrate the Red Brigades, they send the Ulsterman Ross Macrory, posing as an IRA expert in remote controlled bombing. Right from the very day of his arrival in Rome, when his car is followed to the Red Brigades safe house, what appeared to be a straightforward, if risky, assignment-to get the names and whereabouts of Red Brigades members-turns dangerous. The risks begin to pile up when Macrory discovers that he is not the only one playing a double role in Rome. Is the millionaire entrepreneur really a Red Brigades commander? Is the self-confessed, unconventional Communist really a police informer? Is Macrory's Italian counterpart, with whom he has to work, well and truly "bent" and not to be trusted? And what is the truth of the enigmatic young woman from Belfast who flies to Rome in the same plane as Macrory? Before long Macrory becomes entangled in a widening web of duplicity, lies, and international intrigue whose strands extend far beyond the borders of Italy and reach the most powerful men in a country collapsing into political chaos. Then Macrory's assignment becomes extremely dangerous indeed. Contributor Bio:  Duffy, MR Ron Born Northern Ireland, Ron spent three years cycling round Eastern and Western Europe. He then obtained a BA in Geography from the Queen's University of Belfast, emigrated to Canada, took an MSc at the University of Calgary, and studied for his PhD at McGill University in Montreal. In Montreal he started a long career as a university lecturer in Geography. His writing career began as a freelance journalist. Then McGill-Queen's University Press published his book, The Road to Nunavut: The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit since the Second World War, and Libros Libertad has recently published The Unquiet Land, the first novel in a Northern Irish trilogy. In addition he has self-published two novels The Janus Web and Crossed Lives, both available from Amazon as ebooks or paperbacks. Crossed Lives received an Honorable Mention at the 2012 New York Book Festival. His only play, Hearts and Minds, won a first prize in the Alberta Playwriting Competition.