Book review: Cyclical tragedies foisted on stressed communities by gangs of men

There is little new in this engaging but frightening pot boiler. 

Anyone interested in the workings of Ireland’s premiership criminals is already familiar with most of Nicola Tallant’s grim material, especially as swathes of it have been well aired through her print journalism or her popular podcast Crime World, as well as many other established outlets.

Rather, the book’s power comes from bringing myriad strands of Ireland’s underworld together, it clarifies the scale of the violence, the ruthless ambition, the challenges and dangers facing the gardaí, the PSNI, the courts, and the visceral disregard for life or law. 

The default social nihilism too. 

Most of all it underlines the cyclical tragedies foisted on stressed communities afflicted by gangs of feral young men, unemployed but wearing €350 Gucci baseball hats, ready to do anything to usurp the more experienced, established criminals dominating the streets they call home.

That volatile and terrifying potential is represented by the book’s dominant figure, the Dublin hitman Robbie Lawlor. 

When Lawlor was released from prison in December 2019, he had more than 100 convictions to his name and was warned by gardaí that his life was in real danger. 

Reckless and aggressive in equal measures, the cocaine- and steroid-sluicing Lawlor was dead within five months. 

He was shot in Belfast while on what was believed to be a debt-collection mission.

His live-by-the-sword-die-by-the-sword death, one that seemed absolutely inevitable, was widely celebrated on social media by his peers. 

His murder by a lone gunman involved betrayal but removed a dangerous, unreliable collaborator or competitor, one implicated in several murders, from their orbit.

When Lawlor was murdered, he was the prime suspect in the murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods. 

That murder set a benchmark for criminal savagery as the teenager’s body was broken up and parts dumped where Lawlor wished to intimidate those who might oppose, or even deride him. 

Tallant’s descriptions and court records make it clear that Lawlor was a deeply troubled soul, one with many unresolved emotional or psychiatric issues exacerbated by spectacular drug misuse but those complexities are of little interest or consolation to his victims.

His life and death raise an obvious, needling question: How can a society, one that regularly trumpets the idea of equal opportunity and the timely provision of mental health services to those who so obviously need them, deal with a cannonball figure like Robbie Lawlor? 

It is probably naive to imagine that a thug like Lawlor might have been dissuaded from his destructive life by more successful interventions but surrendering to that idea is, all too real as it may be, depressing.

Tallant also details that odious cohort — those who present themselves as committed and active republicans but are no more than a parasitic adjunct to the drug gangs happy to destroy the communities they purport to champion. 

One of these, Alan Ryan, once the head of the “Real IRA”, was shot dead 12 years ago. 

As contemporary reports indicate, a nasty rump of republican and loyalist paramilitaries, retired or otherwise, have embraced a new set of ambitions.

The recent arrest in Spain of veteran criminal and general election candidate Gerry Hutch underlines how very alive and real this culture is in Ireland and Europe. 

The looming Christmas party season and its almost insatiable appetite for cocaine will, once again, expose the dynamic behind this criminality and all of these tragedies. 

Those see-no-evil jamborees will prove, again, that Lawlor and his peers are just a symptom of a far greater problem, one described vividly in this book — a book that would have been greatly enhanced by proficient editing.