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, there's something strange going on in the countryside this week,

from a self-sufficient community surviving the apocalypse

to the most entertaining, exhilarating account of communion with the devil that I've ever read.

Plus, a short visit with one of Ireland's greatest writers to commemorate her 90th birthday.

But first, Jonathan Leatham, whose love of science fiction and superheroes, saw him developing

a reputation as a cult author in the 1990s, before he rose to literary fame in the early 2000s

with his New York set novels, Motherless Brooklyn, and the Fortress of Solitude.

Returning to America's East Coast, his latest novel, The Arrest, centres on a group of isolated

coastal villages. It's the near future, sometime after a mysterious event, the arrest of the title,

has caused all modern technology, cell phones, TVs, cars, planes, guns

to stop working. Sandy, the book's main character, was a Hollywood screenwriter before the

arrest, but now works as a deliveryman and butcher's assistant. His world gets turned upside down

for a second time when an old friend, Peter Todbaum, rolls into town

in an impregnable nuclear-powered car. When I spoke to Jonathan down the line from California,

I asked about his fascination with the apocalypse. I grew up in the, you know, 60s and 70s and

...