In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers.

But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA

was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife.

Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family?

When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe?

I wouldn't even know where to start, and I'm with the IRA.

Steakknife.

Listen first on BBC Sounds.

This is the BBC.

Hello, today we celebrate two men of letters, a dying breed perhaps, as men of emails

just doesn't have the same ring to it. Later, Edward Garnett and James Baldwin.

But first, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of a visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer

Egan, who I last spoke to seven years ago, shortly before she picked up that prize.

Past novels have delved into the cruelties of the beauty business, predicted the explosion

of smartphones and social media, run rampage through the music business, and employed

fragmentary narrative techniques.

Now, proving her versatility, a historical opus set in New York during World War II.

Manhattan Beach is dense with detail and sublimely evocative in bringing to life the great ships, crowded bars, and lives lived around the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where Allied warships were repaired and constructed.

It follows the fortunes of a feisty, pioneering young heroine Anna Kerrigan, who becomes the

Dockland's only female diver, and the two men who shape her life. Eddie, the father who abandons

her, and Dexter Stiles, the suave gangster who once employed him.

Jennifer, welcome.

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