High Dive

Based on true events in 1984 political England, High Dive is about an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on October twelfth, when a long-delay time bomb exploded at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. It’s a novel that carefully weaves the stories of its main characters in a plot about family, love, and the ambition to be a part of something bigger. Roy Walsh, motivated by the death of his father, joins the IRA and jumps at the chance to be involved in his most high-profile assignment to date. Moose, the deputy hotel manager, just wants the best for his daughter Freya, and works tirelessly to make up for a lifelong past of shoddy failures with the Grand’s success. Freya struggles to find herself as she’s about to graduate high school, learning how to reconcile her own wants against those of her father.

Not necessarily a novel that is fast paced nor intense until its climax, the strength of this novel really lays with the phenomenal characters that really developed over the course of the prose. And Jonathan Lee’s descriptions of the people alone is reason enough to enjoy High Dive‘s literary merit.