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. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, almost exactly a year ago in that first month of lockdown,

I was talking to a nurse who expressed frustration at the rhetoric around NHS workers as superheroes

because it suggested that they can't fall ill or fail like anyone else.

The hero figure, often an able-bodied white male, is one that stretches deep into the

Western storytelling tradition, but can offer all-to-easy comfort that doesn't always chime

with how the real world actually works.

Well, today on Open Book, where broadening the notion of that figure with the uncompromising detectives of the post-war Harlem underworld

as written by African-American novelist Chester Heims.

And in our editor's pick, there's a heartbreaking heroic homecoming

from the mind of Sanjeev Sahota.

But first, we begin with a new novel from John McGregor.

The opening of Lean Fall Stand sets the stage for what might have become an intrepid tale of survival against the stormy elements

of Antarctica. But like McGregor's last book, the Costa Award winning Reservoir 13, this novel

becomes an investigation into the after effects of this inciting incident.

As the wife of Robert, one of the survivors, takes on the unglamorous role of helping him recover.

And I'm happy to say that John McGregor joins me now.

John, your book opens in Antarctica, which has held a deeply imaginative space for writers ever since Ernnie Shackleton's account at the turn of the last century.

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