Review of '71 (2014) by Sandy K — 06 Jan 2016

A British soldier gets isolated from his unit in a street battle in Northern Ireland, and spends a harrowing night evading the murderous thugs determined to kill him. Although it is a thriller about one ordinary man caught up in the maelstrom, it also heart-breakingly shows how the cycle of violence and the shifting loyalties among the factions of "The Troubles" brought misery and terror to the people of Belfast, and how traditional military training ill-prepared young soldiers to handle hostile civilians and mobs.

I wished for more of this soldier's home story (I wasn't sure if the boy he left behind was his little brother or a son), but it was enough to make us care about him. I had a hard time figuring out who the plains-clothes soldiers were (intelligence officers?) and their role, but perhaps that was the point - the soldiers didn't really know what they were up to, either; and once they found out, they were powerless to make a bad situation any better.