How to Murder a Man by Carlo Geblér is a gripping tale of Ireland in the mid 1800s when the Ribbonmen dressed in their hoods terrorized people with the fear of torture and death if their warnings were not heeded.

When Thomas French took the land agent job in Beatonboro his goal was get the tenants in arrears to quit their farms in exchange for passage to America. Little did he realize that his humane intentions resulted in undermining the Irish tenant rights in the area - rights that were generally upheld by local landlords, but not protected by law. So, French sets into motion a set of grim, yet sometimes oddly comical and sometimes horrific, events as a group of Irish Ribbonmen set out to murder him for the crime of devaluing tenant rights in Beatonboro.

I have heard many times that you need to be as cruel as you are kind to your characters in order to write a truly compelling story. How to Murder a Man was compelling from beginning to end, always building toward the inevitable conclusions that you know must come, but you hope the characters will somehow escape. Geblér has many great talents as a writer, but I have to say that his greatest talent is to keep his readers on the edge of their seats as they convince themselves that these "inevitable conclusions" won't possible be reached. Then after the climax has connected like a punch to the stomach, Geblér reels the story in with a conclusion that is both satisfying and believable. He is a master of suspense and action.

In addition, Geblér recreates with ease the look and feel of Ireland in the 1800s with bits of description and threads of detail that turn his prose into a visual and intellectual experience. I highly recommend this book to people who 1) enjoy suspense, 2) have a stomach for occasional acts of human cruelty, and 3) enjoy Irish history and politics.