Beginning with the death of IRA figure Sean South of Garryowen on New Year's Day 1957, this title describes the background to what we now call "the troubles" and paints portraits of the major players whose actions sparked the violence that erupted on the streets of Belfast and Derry in 1969.

Beginning with the death of legendary IRA figure Sean South of Garryowen on New Year's Day 1957, this title describes the background to what we have now come to call "the troubles" and paints portraits of the major players whose actions sparked the violence that erupted on the streets of Belfast and Derry in the summer of 1969. Throughout the decades of bloodshed, paramilitary leaders on both sides of the political divide continued to search for more so-called legitimate targets. This book charts how more and more innocent people were unwittingly drawn into the conflict against their will. It examines the killings which marked new lows in the republican/loyalist terror war, from the bombing of pubs and clubs to the advent of "human bomb" couriers, and revisits the horror story that was the infamous "Shankhill Butchers" case. It also covers the more recent murder of the author's colleague Martin O'Hagan, an act which sent shock waves through a battle-hardened media in Northern Ireland. O'Hagan was the first journalist in Ireland to lose his life at the hands of the paramilitaries and his death pushed the parameters of slaughter to new limits.