Pearse Furlong and May-Belle Mulholland are two apparently normal eleven year-olds who meet one summer in small town Antrim, Northern Ireland, in the early 1980s. They have little in common except a shared experience of violent, abusive parents. They form an unlikely alliance and, as their games and shared fantasies spin out of control, their friendship becomes something much darker, with theft, arson, sickening brutality - and eventually murder - all lying ahead. A veteran of twenty years of crime reporting - including on children who kill - as well as many of the biggest stories during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, award-winning news journalist Neil Mackay has created a shocking, pitch black debut novel. Through blackly comic and often visceral prose, he not only demonstrates his deep understanding for his subject but also an extraordinary empathy for children damaged by society's neglect. In Pearse and May-Belle he has created an unforgettable folie a deux and a coruscating satire on the brutality at the fringes of society that many choose to ignore.