The Backslider (Electronic book text)

The setting is Belfast in the 1970s. In a city in which any storefront might unexpectedly explode, Marius Moonston, age sixteen, is out shopping. It's Saturday, and the streets are filled with danger and excitement--especially for Marius, whose pocket is burning with the money he has pilfered from his sister.
Marius has a mission--he knows just what he wants to spend that money on--and a conscience steeped in the dichotomies of the Evangelical church. Ricocheting through the story is the nature of deceit and truth, commerce, disobedience and sin. The consequences of a petty crime are enormous--cathartic and destructive and defining.
McGrady uses language of a distinctly Irish elasticity, and the explosive hilarity of a teenage boy propels the novel to crystalline moments of observation, and shattering self-knowledge.