This is a tale of political skulduggery: a plot to bring down Jack Mulcahy, the Fianna Fail Taoiseach of the day, by some of his colleagues in government, including two Ministers. A mysterious businessman, Dolphie Maughan, is backing their efforts, which involve digging up dirt about how the Taoiseach has made his fortune. The story ranges across Europe, from Switzerland to the postwar Vatican (Pope Pius XII comes out of it rather poorly) involving art theft and murder, simple sleaze and grand larceny.
Telling the tale is Government press secretary Peter O'Donnell, an ex-academic who isn't quite sure why he got the job, admits to drinking rather too much, but appears to be more than competent, and is quickly involved in his own form of betrayal, an affair with the Taoiseach's wife. Apart from the latter minor detail, which gives him the odd twinge of conscience (but nothing he can't handle), he's as loyal as could be, and devotes himself to the task of flushing out the traitors and screwing them before they can screw his boss.
This is a gratifyingly corrupt scenario, the plot is inventive, and no doubt readers will find innocent amusement in trying to spot similarities in modern Irish political life.
Unfortunately, the pace is infuriatingly slow, characterisation is wooden and much of the dialogue is terribly stilted. And O'Donnell's affair with Louise Mulcahy is sub-Mills and Boon. There is no reason at all, apart from honest-to-God male wish fulfilment, why the Taoiseach's elegant wife should suddenly start stroking O'Donnell's thigh (page 43, if you can't wait) or any indication other than O'Donnell's own assertions that this supposedly intelligent woman has a titter of wit.
Many of the characters show initial promise, but starved of natural development and self-revelation, never come to possess a life or a language of their own; the only revelations come second-hand through O'Donnell as storyteller.
However, Amanda, the prissy and pushy Attorney General (with a Terrible Secret in her past) has real potential, and Taoiseach Jack Mulcahy, a plain-speaking fellow with an aesthetic sensibility wisely hidden from the grass-roots of the party, almost succeeds in breaking free from the narrative chains to assume a genuine fictional life.
When the story gets into its stride the multiple strands are competently drawn together and the sense of impending disaster is cleverly built. Though the outcome is never in doubt, the outrageous shenanigans create their own attractions, and the comeuppance is delivered to the erring parties with all the subtlety the Taoiseach possesses, i.e. like a solid uppercut. Press secretary O'Donnell himself, telling the tale, is a reasonably entertaining if exasperating character; in real life one would be regularly begging him to cut to the chase. Incidentally, he shows an impressive familiarity with the better-known Dublin pubs and publicans (reminiscent of a real-life Government press secretary who happily confessed to an Irish Times interviewer that he was an "enthusiastic" social drinker).
There is a delightful vignette wherein O'Donnell arrives at his boss's house after the all-Ireland hurling final, having had seven pints. Before bedding him once again, the lovely Louise decides to sober him up with a steak dinner - and a bottle of wine. Great cure, that.
Manning has not been particularly well served by his copy editor. There are some woeful solecisms which betray an over-reliance on the word-processing spell-checker - an "other worldly air", "new fangled feminism". Punctuation is sloppy, and one mangled Latin tag would certainly have brought down the wrath of Manning's classics teacher.
At almost 300 pages, Betrayal could usefully have been cut by a third. Inside this fat book is a slimmer, more muscular tale of political treachery desperately trying to break free.
Brendan Glacken is an Irish Times staff journalist
