Night Boat to Tangier

A haunting meditation on love, loss, and the ruinous allure of the past.

In a seedy ferry terminal in the Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irish gangsters—Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond—wait through the night, searching for a glimpse of Maurice’s missing daughter, Dilly. She may be arriving from Tangier. She may be leaving for it. Either way, this sleepless vigil becomes a reckoning.

As they wait, memories flood in: of smuggling runs and violent debts, doomed affairs and shattered loyalties, and the slow unraveling of a friendship forged in crime. What unfolds is not just the story of two men broken by time, but a sorrowful excavation of fatherhood, regret, and the emotional wreckage of a life spent on the edge.

Told in lyrical, bruising prose and laced with mordant Irish wit, Night Boat to Tangier is part noir, part elegy—a gorgeous, unsparing novel about the ghosts we carry and the moments that refuse to let us go.

One of the New York Times 10 best books of the year.