A page turner. The structure flows seamlessly from the victim to the informer and then back and forth from informer to Republican punisher. The desperate seedy town, the interior thought process of both characters is wonderfully woven. Quite a good read.
“He felt moved by an uncontrollable impulse. All his actions had completed themselves before his mind was aware of them. His mind was struggling along aimlessly in pursuit of his actions, impotently deprecating them and whispering warnings. But it was powerless.” 46

In 1920s Dublin, among the revolutionaries fighting for the Communist cause, the ultimate sin is to be an informer. Gypo Nolan knows this, but when there’s a £20 reward for information relating to his former friend Frankie and he can’t even afford a bed in the doss house, survival takes precedence over this principle. From this act, others follow: Nolan’s pursuit by the forces in the revolutionary party, his own guilt over informing on his friend, and the living conditions of the down-and-out in Dublin.

This was certainly a fast-paced book and full of slap-bang action pieces. The atmosphere of paranoia is well done too, and the squalor of the living conditions is captured somewhat vividly. And the scene in the fish and chip shop made me hungry! However, the descriptions for some of the characters, particularly the women and Nolan himself, felt patronizing (referring to Nolan as an animal or a brute rather than a human being), and Gallagher is a self-absorbed, sociopathic creep who receives way too much air time. So it’s not a book that I plan to reread. ( )

Ambientada en el convulso Dublín de los años posteriores a la guerra civil irlandesa (1922-1923), El delator es una historia de traiciones y lucha clandestina. Publicada en 1925, y considerada una de las mejores novelas del irlandés Liam O’Flaherty, retrata el mundo de los bajos fondos dublineses, refugio de pistoleros y prostitutas, en el que acechan enemigos aún más peligrosos que la propia policía: los confidentes. ( )

This was a good story, mired in a heck of a lot of bilious, overwrought, sometimes plodding adjectives.
But entertaining with a few little funny moments and observations (even funnier when they weren't laden with the minutest of details regarding the angle of both theft and right arms, hands, each finger, hair on the character's head, &c.).
It reminded me of an Irish version of The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad (which I loved and flowed more smoothly, so far as I recall). ( )

644. The Informer, by Liam O'Flaherty (read 19 Mar 1961) (James Tait Black Memorial fiction prize for 1925) This is an absorbing novel. ( )