Princess Jennifer of Edinburgh has had a life not unlike that of Princess Diana, the difference being that when we meet her, Prince Conrad, her husband, has been killed in a speedboat accident. Desirous to help end the ongoing conflict in the North of Ireland, Jennifer gets involved in studies and negotiations, becoming accepted as a mediator. The year is 1998.
TIARA begins as a planned peace conference gets under way, Jennifer's advisors warning that it may be targeted by terrorists. The Republican people are tired of being treated like second-class citizens, while the Unionists are afraid of being abandoned in the high-maintenance province to be absorbed into the Irish state. In civilised London's Covent Garden however, an assassin is being offered terms by Al Qaeda to remove Jennifer from the scene, as peace would stop their profitable trade with the IRA. This assassin is named Berlin Mansfield, one of the global security agencies' most wanted men. CIA operatives are ordered to Belfast for the summit, among IRA terrorist chiefs and drug-dealing UDA loyalist gangsters. What nobody knows however is that Mansfield is half in love with the popular princess and, with Irish roots, he longs for a solution to the chaos.
An underprepared security team can't prevent the princess's driver from crashing her car and the brave lady is kidnapped... by whom? Potentially by anyone who doesn't want peace. A sociopathic female serial killer is also on the loose, just to complicate matters, and SAS commandoes, bikers and lay preachers alike get involved, while terrorists don't hesitate to murder their own.
This quirky tale is as much an alternate reality as a thriller, with Britain still running an Empire and Scotland having its own monarchy. Names such as Skull Murphy, Fritz Hammer and Slash Sabre are amusing and characters seem off-the-wall but have been carefully drawn so as not to resemble actual individuals. Princess Jennifer is idealistic to a fault but brave and resourceful. Nobody else comes out well from this scenario - the author doesn't scruple to describe both sides in the conflict as mass murderers and serial killers, profiting hugely from illegal deals which would be halted if the police were free to get on with policing. The CIA operatives are also linked to a missing stash of heroin and they own mansions. The writing style is American, with narration references to sheetrock, a panel truck and block party, while people regularly grin or gesture words instead of speaking them. There is a particularly funny aside where a woman is accused of being a Fenian, and shouts back that she's a Wiccan. Being Irish I can look back at the chaos of the time described and just be glad that it's largely over, but the period does lend itself to endlessly complex plotting and action.
TIARA is reminiscent of early Terence Strong books although I think John Reinhard Dizon is writing more for Americans, and he just needs to be careful that his readers don't get confused with the parade of organisation initials. As an action story it's a decent read, if peopled largely by men. I wouldn't mind seeing Princess Jennifer in another adventure.
Tiara is one of the most original novels on Northern Ireland
written in quite some time. Based on the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement, it borrows from the Princess Diana tragedy in a
what-if scenario, then takes a dark turn into the shadowy
world of terrorism that brings us right alongside modern day
headlines. Its politics, its characters and its storyline
are controversial and intriguing, turning this into a first-
rate page-turner.
Princess Jennifer is a widowed member of British royalty who
pursues a vision quest in attending the negotiations at
Stormont leading to the GFA in NI of 1998. She becomes a
fantasy object to Berlin Mansfield, a terrorist who finagles
his way into the peace talks to meet the Princess. Unknown
to both of them, she is also the target of the Ulster
Defense Association, a loyalist gang intent on holding her
hostage to stop the negotiations. She is kidnapped by the
UDA, and Mansfield offers his services to the rival IRA to
try and rescue the Princess. CIA agents Jon Stevens and
Slash Scimitar are in NI on a mission and end up helping the
British track down both Mansfield and the kidnappers.
Eventually the 'black knight' rescues the Princess, and we
end up on a different track on this rollercoaster that
eventually hurtles us home safely into the Good Friday
Agreement.
Tiara's Jennifer is a knock-off of Princess Di, reminiscent
of the guess-who characterizations employed by Mario Puzo in
The Godfather. She's a statuesque, emerald-eyed blonde whose
philandering husband buys the farm in a boating accident,
leaving her with her own unique title (the Princess of
Edinburgh) and position as heiress to the throne of England.
She buries her grief in British philanthropy, drawing her
into the centuries-old debate over the Troubles in Ulster.
She becomes a crusader for the quest for self-governance,
and in doing so becomes a target for the Ulster Defense
Association, a loyalist terror gang. They kidnap the
Princess in a last-ditch effort to derail the talks, and we
see a reenactment of Lady Di's car accident become a segue
into her capture. Her celebrity catapults the incident into
international headlines, and at this point the story
escalates into a tale of romance, intrigue, revenge and
murder between the UDA and the rival IRA.
Although the IRA and their counterparts, Sinn Fein and MADD
(Mothers Against Drug Dealers, or Evil Mothers), remain
shadowy figures in the novel, the conflicts within the UDA
are most noteworthy. Elderly bosses Jimmy "the Bull" Doherty
and Delmore Merrick struggle to maintain control of their
politically-savvy kidnap team under street tough Baxter
Cody. Along with fraying political connections, they
eventually lose their most deadly assassin, Shannon
Blackburn (my vote as the scariest villain of all time), as
well as their control of East Belfast in the changing times
ahead. The subplot provides us with an insightful look at NI
in its arrival into a new century amidst its traditional
values and mores.
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