It's funny, but it's not until you set out to write a book you realise how little stuff you know. I don't know how writers did this before Google. Really.

Yet again, how researching A Decent Bomber didn't get me nicked, I don't know. Surely someone, somewhere is looking out for people from the Middle East displaying an interest in supplies of ammonium nitrate, semtex, plastic tubing and detonators? Maybe they are, and a whole team of over-excited NSA types has just been stood down. 'Calm down, lads, it's just another bloody author'...

I now know how you make a one ton bomb. It's a bit like being able to touch your nose with your tongue. There's not much call for the skill...

Meeting former IRA man Brendan Curran was a big deal for me, not least because it made me realise the book I had originally written didn't achieve the aim I set out for it and was somewhat cartoonish - and sent me back to the drawing board. It was all arranged by my sister-in-law who knew Brendan through her work in local government.

I'll confess I was nervous about the meeting in his house, which started with me spotting a 50mm brass shell on the mantlepiece and him starting by asking me the immortal question, 'So. What are you about, then?' in a thick Northern Irish accent.

Ulp.

It was pretty illuminating, that meeting. Brendan went down to Long Kesh and served 15 years of a (if memory serves me right) 27-year sentence. I asked him if he’d had time off for good behaviour and he barked laughter. “Good behaviour? We burned the fucking prison down!”

You sort of need to do that in a Norn Iron accent. It’s probably the best accent in the world for threatening violence, which in itself is part of the whole tragedy of the thing. Brendan opened my eyes to what it was actually like to be on the lam, on the wrong side of the law in a strung out conflict with a G7 nation’s security services ranged against you.

I happened to mention the meeting had taken place to a friend of ours who hails from a Unionist tradition at a party in Dubai one night. She walked out and hasn’t spoken to me since. It’s a bit like Beirut - the fire’s out, but there’s heat underneath them there white ashes…

Research shenanigans

My serious and dedicated research in Belfast consisted mainly of getting hammered with the in-laws and staying in the lavish Merchant Hotel. If you're ever in Belfast, go for a few late night drinks at The Spaniard - the nearest thing to a Hamra bar I've ever encountered outside Hamra itself. They’re both wonderful places to be seriously pissed in. Hamra is in Beirut, which you’d know if you’d read Beirut - An Explosive Thriller. Ahem.

It was all a bit like researching Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy by eating lazy afternoon mezze with friends in that very village high up in the mountains - oh, this author's life! It was nice that an anti-internment march that took place the next day plunged Belfast right back into 1990s timewarp, with armoured squad cars and water cannon on the street. Novel research gold, right there - even with an evil hangover.

Gosh, but you have to find out all sorts of things. Cow diseases, train timetables, bullet impact velocities and the like. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to actually kill a cow if you're not using an RPG. The organisational chart of Tipperary police was one delightful evening's work. Ferry timetables, capacities and freight sailings get jumbled up with the colour of this police station wall or the reception layout of that hotel. Visiting locations (suspicious drive-by's of Banbridge nick) and checking facts, distances and even number plate series conventions all come into it.

And all because there's an Internet and somewhere in it is Nigel who knows the air speed of an African swallow. Unladen.