He took out his watch and looked at it. He rested for one minute as timed on his watch. He opened the briefcase and took out a passport and a pair of spectacles. He put the spectacles on and looked at the passport, and realised he was the man in the picture.A gunshot rang out: Part thriller, part spy novel, Exchange Place is set between Belfast and Paris and tracks the individual movements of two men, John Kilfeather and John Kilpatrick, who are trying to solve a mystery concerning a lost friend, a missing notebook and a gun. But this is no ordinary mystery and the usual rules don't apply. Appearances are deceptive; identities dissolve, become slippery; and it's easy to lose track of who you are in the winding streets and passageways of the city. As the paths of Kilpatrick and Kilfeather slowly and inexorably converge, it is only the subterranean Memory Palace that can open the way to the truth

More than twenty years after the end of their love affair, Gabriel receives a series of cryptic postcards from his old flame. Inspired to write his own letter, Gabriel dwells in sensuous detail on perfumes, clothes, and conversations as he tries to recapture the spirit of their romance in 1980s Belfast. As Gabriel teases out the significance of the postcards, the layers of meaning in the images and messages, his reveries develop into richly textured meditations on writing, memory, spiritualism, and surveillance. The result is an elaborate and intricate web of fact and fiction, a narrative that marries sharp historical insights with imaginative exuberance, a strange and wonderful novel confirming Ciaran Carson as one of Ireland's most exciting writers