A visit to Northern Ireland and Derry gave me the location of Eamon's home. We had a B&B in Derry and from the bedroom window I could see the Walls of Derry and the Bogside Bloody Sunday memorial and I knew then that Eamon's home would be somewhere in that vicinity. The final locations fell into place when we stayed in Greencastle in Co Donegal. I learned that a ferry service between there and Magilligan across the wide expanse of Lough Foyle now linked the Republic with the North, cutting out the long round trip by road. The ferry service had not been open for many years; it was another beneficiary of the Good Friday Agreement. At nights, the lights of Magilligan Prison across the Lough light up as though one is looking at a small town. I also knew that in the early days of the Troubles, back in the seventies, Magilligan was a prison for those suspected of belonging to the IRA, most of them rounded up when the British Government, under pressure from the old Unionist-dominated Northern Ireland parliament, introduced Internment without trial in 1971.
        Until I have the names of the principal characters and then the locations, I find it difficult to begin a story or a novel. The characters were in place already. With my locations settled, it was time to begin.
        Just as I was completing The Coast of Death, the Northern Ireland Assembly came into being. As expected, the Northern Ireland Assembly duly elected the Reverend Ian Paisley, the leader of the largest party, First Minister, and Martin McGuinness became his deputy. In time, because they appeared in public together and gave every appearance of enjoying each other's company, they were nicknamed the Chuckle Brothers.

—Thomas McCarthy