Ballinasloe native and accomplished journalist and author, Joe Joyce, has just released his latest work, Echowave, a gripping fiction based against the backdrop of the Second World War.
The setting is June, 1941. An American plane crashes in the west of Ireland. Its cargo of booze, cigarettes, and caviar destined for the US embassy in London, includes a piece of secret military hardware of great interest to the Germans.
The device disappears from the wreckage. Paul Duggan, a young Irish military intelligence officer still pining for a beautiful Austrian-Jewish refugee who has moved on to a new life in New York, sets out to find it before the Germans do.
Meanwhile, the United States and the British are pushing neutral Ireland to help protect their Atlantic convoys, which would involve it in the war. The search and the diplomatic arm-twisting become entwined and take Duggan to the dangerous back streets of Lisbon, the war’s spy centre, where the intelligence games between the Allies and the Nazis can turn deadly.
A fast-paced and utterly gripping historical thriller, Echowave concludes a trilogy that reveals the hidden depths of political, military, and human conflict in 1940s Ireland.
Joe Joyce is a former Irish Times journalist as well as an author and playwright. Originally from Ballinasloe, Joyce now resides in Dublin. His recent works include Echobeat and Echoland, set during the Second World War in Dublin; The Guinnesses: The Untold Story of Ireland's Most Successful Family, a history of the Guinness family and brewery; and a play about James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty, The Tower.
He is also the author of two thrillers, Off the Record and The Trigger Man, and co-author with Peter Murtagh of The Boss, the seminal book on Charles Haughey. He has worked as a staff reporter and freelance journalist for The Irish Times and The Guardian.
