Books: Assassin’s Thoughts

THE ASSASSIN—Liam O’Flaherty—Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

A little more than a year ago, an Irish political leader, Kevin O’Higgins, walked on a street in Dublin. It was Sunday and he was going to church. An automobile sped down the avenue. Some men who had been loitering on the sidewalk suddenly became active. Thus was Kevin O’Higgins assassinated.

Mr. Liam O’Flaherty, like all other Irishmen, was interested. To him the act was not a futile political gesture. Instead, he personalized it. What, he asked, did the assassin think of, before; what did he do, after?

In the person of Michael McDara, he draws the sudden nauseating terrors, the megalomania, the curious mystical exaltations of the assassin. McDara, having conceived the assassination-idea, three years before, arrives in Dublin a few days before the act. He enlists the support of two men and a woman. His continuous struggle against panic, and above all the conflict of conceptions of the act’s significance and symbolism make the book.

The Assassin is written in powerful style, replete with staccato photographic impressions.