For The Good Times

Sammy and his three friends live in the Ardoyne, an impoverished, predominantly Catholic area of North Belfast. They love sharp clothes, a good drink, and the songs of Perry Como – whose commitment to clean living holds up a dissonant mirror to their own attempts to rise above their circumstances. Keen to make a difference, the boys find themselves in the incongruous position of running a comic-book shop taken over by the IRA. Their clandestine activities belong in the x-rated pages of graphic fiction: burglary, blackmail, extortion, torture, and murder – and they become transfixed by the initiatory possibilities of free-reign criminality.