Rating: 
Summary: Rage and redemption
Review: In the summer of 1982 three gun shots narrowly miss off-duty RUC policeman Alfred White. As their sounds still resonate through the Newry neighbourhood and absorb, stifle and stop all other human activity, White runs for his life. Chased and in mortal agony he resorts to instinct and darts towards his home. There the hit man steps forward, "his Browning .38 pistol extended." At this fleeing threshold of death White takes his umbrella and starts in an insane dance trying to fence with his killer. A few days later, after the mourners have left, the young IRA volunteer Eamon Collins, who set White up for assassination, kneels down at his grave, "not to pay my respect, but to read the messages on his wreaths to see whether his RUC colleagues had left any useful details."Eamon Collins is not a kind man. As an information officer for the IRA he was involved in some of the most abhorrent murders in Northern Ireland. For years he ruthlessly staked out people that the IRA deemed "legitimate targets". Often for months, he followed them to find the essential bit of regularity in their lifes and movements (their "fatal routine") that made them vulnerable and open to attack. At some later point in his life, Collins sits down to talk about political violence - and we better listen. In the first part of his book Collins gives the insider's account of the IRA. Subdivided into "operations" it largely dismisses the idea of a highly disciplined and trained army fighting exclusively for the ethereal cause of Irish freedom. Instead, he presents an organization pervaded by bunglers and lowlifes. Oblivious to any questions about the military and political exigencies - if not any moral concerns - of their doing they kill most of their victims out of revenge, rage or routine. The others die - sort of - accidentally, due to wrong identification or sloppy bomb work. However, despite all its sordidness, Collins' fast-paced story is also an engrossing tale of reckless adventure, of shoot-outs, hideouts and skidding getaway cars. On side roads accross the border, past grisly loyalist gangs in Belfast, underneath the hovering army helicopters in South Armagh, Collins sneaks the reader to truly bizarre places: to training camps, secret commander meetings, blown up customs stations, to "safe houses" and to"death houses". This breakneck existence ends with an explosion. After a bomb detonates in Newry and kills nine police officers, Collins, who was not involved in the operation, is immediately arrested and whisked off to the infamous Gough Barracks. On the fifth day of interrogation and torture at the hands of the RUC two officers lie beside him on the floor, "one at each ear, shouting in unison: 'Murdering dog, Murdering dog. You're going away for life, you murdering dog.' They screamed at the tops of their voices for at least half an hour. ... . Suddenly, as I lay there, I began to feel like a participant in a spectacle from an absurdist play. ... . In that moment, as I floated in unreality, I realized that I had lost my will to resist." Collins gets up, sits down and starts talking, first to the Crown forces and then to anyone who cared to listen. Unflinchingly, he details his role in the IRA and the suffering he has brought to his victims. He confronts and betrays his former comrades and then - during the legal proceedings that ensue - zealously strives to enrage everyone who could harm him: the Provos, the loyalists, the army and the RUC. In the end, the boy who wanted to be a Brit, become a lawyer, rise in the ranks of the IRA and who eventually not even made it as a "grass" takes them all on. The essential weakness of Collins' book is its style. It too strictly abides to the conventions of the factual account. It does not adequately convey the immediacy, drama and speed of the action. At times, in an effort to create a poignancy the story already carries, it slides into the melodramatic. Despite these shortcomings it is astonishing that so far no film director has stumbled over the book, given the visual power of Collins' memory. As it is, "Killing Rage" is not passionately optimistic about lasting peace in Northern Ireland. In fact, if there is any hope at all to be found in the book it lies in Collins' unconditional belief in the idea of justice - even although this idea, more often than not, arrives with a vengeance.
Rating: 
Summary: For all students of Irish history and the Troubles
Review: This is a compelling tale to say the least and a must read for anyone with interest in the ongoing troubles in Northern Ireland. Though not to be taken as an historical account, it does paint a stark and honest view of a man from deep within the organization.
Be you loyalist or republican, Irish-born or otherwise, this is truely a fine companion for anyone who wants to gain further understanding of the highly complex nature of the social and political conflict in Northern Ireland.
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