Novels set during the Troubles have done well in recent years. Whether it’s the Booker Prize winning Milkman by Anna Burns or Michael Hughes’ re-interpretation of the Iliad with Country, writers have found new ways to deal with a hugely traumatic time in British and Irish history.

David Roy has taken as his subject the experiences of Lee, a working class soldier from Blackpool, having grown up in extreme poverty, and who joins the army looking for some kind of purpose in a life that until this moment is going nowhere. His tour of Northern Ireland is based in Belfast as uneventful patrols and checkpoints are interspersed with high drama, from contact with the enemy to dealing with the challenges presented by RUC officers up to no good.

Alongside Lee is a cast of characters in his platoon that are written with realism and humour by Roy as barracks life is entertainingly described. The antagonist is Dennis, a passionate republican, though naïve and from a more comfortable, middle class part of Belfast. Dennis is desperate to join the IRA and so contribute to ‘the cause’, whether that means a ‘tap’ to the head of a suspected ‘tout’, or taking pot shots at troops as they emerge from their base, much like the 7th Cavalry emerged from forts on the frontier of the West to deal with the pesky natives.

The plot revolves around Lee’s inner struggles with his own upbringing, his non-existent relationship with his mother, and his struggles to communicate with a detached and disinterested girlfriend. Life in the army saves him, but at the same point as a meeting with Dennis whilst on his final operation, and the two are brought together in lethal confrontation.

Roy writes with pace and his characters are rich and have depth. It is easy to empathise with Lee as he performs his duty in a part of the country the other home nations ignore, and when those on the mainland do turn their gaze to Northern Ireland, they are hopelessly uneducated and misinformed. A former soldier in the British Army, Roy served in the Ulster Defence Regiment and he has written a story that unusually places the British squaddie in a sympathetic light. More than five hundred servicemen and women were killed during the conflict. For that reason alone The Plaster Saints is a book that can rightfully sit alongside other novels examining the Troubles.

Oliver Webb-Carter is the Editor of Aspects of History.