People who have had building work done in their house in recent years will be aware of the type of experience that reading this book creates. The contract, in this case printed on the cover, is for "the explosive tale no one dared tell". All, or most of the materials are at hand to build, in this case the story of John Gilligan's drug gang and the murder of Veronica Guerin, and paid for.
Then the work turns out to be not quite what you had bargained for. Where there should be doors there are windows. Where a modest enough structure, like a dormer bungalow say, was sought, what you get is sometimes in abstract, inverted form like a Rachel Whiteread negative space but without the beauty.
Many of the problems with this book could be solved easily - and it would be worth the effort - by editing and reshaping. Much of it is easily read and will be informative to anyone who has not followed the Guerin/Gilligan saga closely in the Irish media. There are questions of balance in the weight given to various accounts of what happened, especially when it comes to the sources that the author relies on.
The author's contacts in the IRA, which he quotes at length, are allowed to stand largely unquestioned. The IRA is mainly portrayed as a force of good working against the drug dealers. That, some gardai and community activists would argue, is not the case. There are instances of Dublin IRA figures doing very well for themselves in recent years while living in areas that are bedevilled by drugs.
Some of the dissident republicans in Dublin left the IRA not just because of the ceasefire and political process in the North but because of what they have seen as nest feathering by some of their former leaders. The reference to the IRA's officer commanding in Portlaoise Prison at the time of Gilligan's extradition is to a softly spoken Limerick man. It is not mentioned that he is actually in prison for the manslaughter of Det Garda Jerry McCabe.
The author's description of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) as a white elephant is not accurate. It and the Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue's asset-seizing legislation have been very effective tools against organised criminals, money launderers and, now, against livestock smugglers. CAB is the bugbear of Irish criminals who see all the hard work go to naught when their Ponderosas and Range Rovers are taken from them. It is being copied by other states, notably the UK which has emulated the legislation and the bureau.
The book initially derides the work of the Guerin investigation team based at Lucan Garda Station and headed by Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey. Confusingly, this is followed by a catalogue of their successes against Gilligan's gang. The Lucan Incident Room was probably the most effective investigative operation ever mounted by the Garda. The biggest drug smuggling operation in the history of the State was broken up; two men convicted of murdering Ms Guerin - Gilligan and his associate, Patrick Holland - given heavy sentences for drugs; drugs and around 200 guns seized; and several other sentences for minor offences. Dublin criminals were enraged at the gang's decision to murder the journalist specifically because of the tough new environment it created for them.
The book is also disposed to the view that Gilligan and his wife, Ger, are separated despite the fact she has visited him weekly since his incarceration in Portlaoise. Mrs Gilligan, who co-operated with the author, has claimed in defence of the CAB's attempts to seize the couple's valuable equestrian centre at Jessbrook, at Enfield, Co Kildare that the property is hers alone because of the legal separation.
Aside from the substance, there is a problem with language that badly needs addressing.
My head spun on occasions. What does: "The Criminal Assets Bureau attracted a great deal of controversy due to the anarchic laws empowered in it," mean? Then there is the likes of: "Furthering the conversation's descent into the sublime, Gilligan nodded and agreed. `It wouldn't have made a bit of difference because she was dying of cancer anyway."'
The final chapter consists only of the 40,000-word judgement on Gilligan, run in full. This may have been one of the quickest book chapters ever completed as it could have been down-loaded from the Irish Times website in a few seconds and emailed to a publisher in another minute.
Throughout, there is a sense that this was a book written to the deadline of Gilligan's conviction and sentence. Its best parts are the accounts of Dublin gang life and the interplay between its principal characters. The protracted court case accounts towards the end are all the more boring for having followed the good middle chapters about Gilligan and his gang's villainy.
Jim Cusack is co-author of UVF and Security Editor of The Irish Times