Hard Cases: True Stories of Irish Crime

by Gene Kerrigan (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $4.84

  Hard Cases is a collection of startling stories about the reality of crime and court cases in Ireland. In these stories, there are no crime bosses with quaint nicknames; the police don't collect convenient clues that tell them who dunnit.

  Instead, we get cases both famous and obscure in which the outcome is sometimes just, sometimes unsettling.

  It begins with `Dessie O'Hare's Last Stand', which records in breathtaking detail the inside story of a notorious kidnapping. It ends with `The Small Legend of Karl Crawley', the story of a sometimes gentle, sometimes wild young Dublin man who found a shocking way of fighting back against authority.

  There's the story of how Peter Mathews went into a police station to answer questions about a petty crime and ended up dead, with gardai covering up the reason why. How did Fr Molloy come to die in the bedroom of his married friends? What happened when a man came home to find his daughter's boyfriend wielding a hatchet?

  Then there are the stories of murder, incest, libel and the legal warfare between rival Elvis fans.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $4.36

  Hard Cases opens with a brilliant retelling of the Border Fox, in which Dessie O'Hare and his associates kidnapped and mutilated Dublin dentist John O'Grady. It continues with stories as diverse as the horrifying Kilkenny incest case; the Shercock scandal in which Peter Matthews died in Garda custody and for which no one was ever convicted; the Father Molloy case in County Offaly; the Greencore affair; and the hilarious goings-on between rival Elvis Presley fan clubs. Finally, Gene Kerrigan looks at the life and criminal times of Karl Crawley, a violent, drug-addicted habitual criminal who has been in and out of Mountjoy so many times that they have a special cell for him. Written in Gene Kerrigan's addictive style, once you've started reading, you won't be able to stop. Other books by Gene Kerrigan Another Country Never Make a Promise You Can't Break This Great Little Nation.