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The General is alternate-history Irish-flavoured Christian science fiction and is the sequel to The Peace, The Friends, and The Exile (Volumes One to Three of The Interregnum).
The General recounts Tadgh O'Kelly's life from his 1987 graduation as Kilkarney's top cadet to his career as an army forensic investigator. As the years go by, he gradually knits the threads of evidence from numerous kidnappings of women and children into a noose, but finding the guilty neck to tie it around takes all his skill, and not a little help.
A second arc of the story cycle follows Mara Meathe from her arrival at Tara's court. She confronts Frank Haggerty, then is given a series of assignments by the Donal. Fellow Afghan campaign heroine Maeve Derry encounters Brian O'Niall and Mara's friend Jana in Centralia. They discover a worldwide conspiracy against The Friends of The Day. Subsequently, Maeve, Mara, and Nellie Hacker are called to West China by Cath Maguire, to fight floods, bandits, and yet another conspiracy. When two helicopters are lost with all aboard killed, Cath is charged with cowardice and sent to Tara for court martial. Her former Kilkarney Cadet-Sergeant Tad O'Kelly is made Senchus to try the case.
The third arc takes place on Tirdia, near the BC Fraser Valley's Chilliwack. Nellie goes to Tirdia to assist Day MacAllister with some court appointed espionage. During a delivery of sensitive electronics from MacAllister Enterprises, her car is stolen. With RCMP Inspector Morris O'Malley, Army Intelligence officers Sandy MacFarlaine and General O'Connor, and local paperboy Lucas Caine, she recovers the stolen goods. Most of the thieves escape, apparently via a local nursing home. There, Lucas discovers Jane Doe, a quad amputee who's blind, can't speak, and appears to be a hundred years old but thinks she's twenty-one. In danger from two nurses with a macabre hobby and doctors who'll despatch her when they're finished experimenting on her, the paralyzed, half-dead woman is also a key to cracking Cath Maguire's case, provided she can persuade Lucas to heal her and help her escape to Hibernia without telling him what's going on.
Events of The General play out on Hibernia at Tara, Edenderry, Luna City, Toronto, South Africa, India, Afghanistan, Centralia, West China, and Japan of Hibernia as well as in Chilliwack and Aldergrove on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada (Tirdia).
--- Volume 4 of The Interregnum.
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