MY BOOK

The Notetakers is a gripping work of historical fiction set in the shadowed streets of Dublin in the years leading up to the 1916 Easter Rising. Blending fact and imagination with remarkable detail, Barry O Brien takes readers deep inside the hidden world of G Division, Dublin Castle’s most secretive unit, whose officers were tasked with observing, recording, and infiltrating those deemed enemies of the Crown.

At the heart of the novel is Detective Inspector Daniel Barton, a haunted man balancing loyalty, duty, and private grief, as he alters intelligence files and wrestles with the dangerous double lives of informants. Alongside him is Detective Sergeant Tom Malone, one of the “Notetakers”, whose meticulous surveillance of Patrick Pearse and the Irish Volunteers reveals both the precision and the peril of intelligence work in a city on the brink.

From the tenements of Monto to the corridors of Dublin Castle, and from clandestine meetings to coded messages, the story interweaves fictional characters such as Sean Maguire, the streetwise orphan turned seaman, with real historical figures like Pearse, Clarke, and MacDiarmada. The result is a layered narrative of espionage, betrayal, and loyalty, set against the charged atmosphere of a country edging towards revolution.

Tense, atmospheric, and unflinching in its detail, The Notetakers shines a light on the men who watched, wrote, and often disappeared into history, leaving behind only the fragments of their reports. It is both a portrait of a divided Dublin and a story about how secrets, once written down, can become weapons as powerful as guns.