The Big Lie - Who Profits From Ireland’s Austerity?

A radical view of what lies behind the Irish recession.

The cold anger of the writing is as powerful as anything else you'll have read this year.

Gene Kerrigan was born and lives in Dublin, where he has covered politics, crime and scandals for over thirty years. He wrote for Magill magazine and the Sunday Tribune, and currently writes for the Sunday Independent. Among his non-fiction books are the bestselling Hard Cases, Another Country and This Great Little Nation. He’s also the author of four novels, the latest of which, The Rage, won the UK’s top crime fiction award, the Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, at the 2012 Crime Writers’ Association awards.

Ireland’s economic collapse hit with bewildering speed and cut deep into many lives. At a time when we most needed leadership, our politicians let us down, telling us we were all to blame for the recession and that we just needed to suffer a little pain to make everything right again. It was a Big Lie. 
This book offers an alternative view to the official cover story of austerity. It’s about the great majority of us who weren’t gambling with our future. It’s about what’s being done to us, who is doing it and why. It’s also about who benefits from this and who gets it in the neck. And what we might do about that. 
Gene Kerrigan delves deep into the muddy waters of the boom and crash, the chaos in the banks, the intervention by the troika and the erosion of democracy. He looks at how the Dáil and the media became full of mindless free market cheerleaders, how the country became laden down with unregulated bankers, and how the government acquiesced in imposing a destructive programme of austerity on the Irish people. 
Meanwhile, the elites in our society wrap the green flag around themselves, calling for sacrifice and patriotism, while they hold on fiercely to every perk and privilege. 
It’s time to tell the truth.

The Rage

Winner of the 2012 CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, this is a gripping thriller set in credit-crunch Dublin, from the master of hardboiled Irish noir.

A stunning novel. Here at last is the Irish Chandler. Naylor is a villain worthy of Elmore Leonard in his prime

The Rage is a gripping thriller written with such authority and authenticity that it almost feels like documentary. If you love crime fiction, you owe it to yourself to read Gene Kerrigan

Kerrigan's bruising depiction of Dublin's underbelly is wrought with hard-boiled lyricism

Written in Kerrigan's trademark, sparse style, it rattles along the way all good crime fiction should

What marks this book out is the page-turning combination of tension, threats of violence, strong writing and rattling pace

A gritty, double-plotted procedural set against Ireland’s banking crisis

Veteran journalist Gene Kerrigan is the author of four novels, the most recent of which, The Rage, won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year - an award previously won by authors including Belinda Bauer, Peter Temple, Michael Dibdin and Ian Rankin.

Winner of the 2012 Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel 
 
Vincent Naylor, a professional thief, is fresh out of jail. His latest project, an armed robbery, is just days away. 
 
Bob Tidey, an honest, hardworking policeman, dedicated to public service, is about to commit perjury. 
 
Maura Coady, a retired nun living in a Dublin backstreet, is lost in bad memories and regrets. Then, she sees something that she can't ignore, and makes a phone call that will unleash a storm of violence.

Dark Times in the City

A riveting page-turner thriller set among Dublin underworld - shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.

Brilliant... Unbearably tense... stomach-churningly frightening

Cruelly authentic... a very fine crime novel

The writing in Dark Times is urgent and uncluttered, the plotting taut...Kerrigan's real coup lies in his assured portrayal of Danny Callaghan, a man with a chequered history but more than a flicker of humanity

Muscular writing, a smart line in self-deprecating humour, terrific dialogue and an engrossing portrayal of the sights and sounds of Dublin noir

Exhilarating... Pacy, suspenseful... Opens with a bang

His style is taught and his dialogue pings and fizzes.  I just have one question.  When's the next instalment due?

Gene Kerrigan's writing is magnificent. It's graceful, tough, hardboiled and tender, razor-sharp and gritty as it is lyrical and truthful

Danny Callaghan is just out of jail and enjoying a quiet drink in a Dublin pub when two men walk in with guns. On impulse, he intervenes to rescue the intended victim, petty criminal Walter Bennett, and finds himself dragged into Dublin's murky underworld. As the police grope for answers and Danny struggles to protect those he loves, the rising tensions between the gangs threaten to erupt into a bloody showdown. 
 
Dark Times in the City portrays a society stumbling from prosperity to uncertainty - where cocaine and easy money have fuelled a ruthless gang culture and a man's impulsive decency may cost him the lives of those who matter most.

Little Criminals

Strikingly sharp and thrillingly violent, Little Criminals is the celebrated debut of the doyen of Dublin crime and winner of the Gold Dagger 2012.

A savage x-ray picture of contemporary Ireland... beautifully etched characters

this is a terrific novel, tense and exciting. I spun through it quicker than it takes to tell

A great writer, a great story, relentless and brilliant

He writes with a light touch that makes his darker final chapters all the more disturbing

Justin and Angela Kennedy have money, love, children and a limitless future. Jo-Jo Mackendrick is a pillar of Dublin gangland society; a man determined that nothing will endanger his hard-earned supremacy. Into their lives come Frankie Crowe, an ambitious criminal tired of risking his life for small change. Kidnap could be the first step on his climb to a better life, and he knows just the kind of dangerous men to make it happen...

The Midnight Choir

A magnificant follow up to Little Criminals from the winner of the 2012 Gold Dagger Award. Frightening, violent, unputdownable.

Kerrigan has always been one of this country's leading journalists. With this novel, he becomes one of its leading writers. The Midnight Choir is both riveting and disquieting

The writing is fiercely unsentimental, the plotting complex and the characterisation pleasingly contrary ... [This] will stay with you for a long time

Sometimes, getting away with it is all that matters. 
 
Dixie Peyton, widow of a petty criminal, is struggling to regain custody of her son. In desperation she seeks the help of controversial detective Harry Synnott, a man obsessed by his own interpretation of justice. But Synnott has other priorities. As he finds himself getting deeper into trouble, Dixie risks becoming a sacrifice on the altar of Synnott's career. 
 
Meanwhile the police have arrested a blood-stained man. They seem to have chanced upon a murderer - now they need to find out who he killed. Ruthless gangland leader Lar Mackendrick is hunting an informer. And armed thief Joshua Boyce is about to rob a jeweller's shop. For all of them, as the pressure mounts and the choices become stark, getting away with it is all that matters.

Gene Kerrigan

One of the most remarkable and enjoyable books that has been written about the Easter Rising in recent times . . . This stunning narrative . . a real page-turner that captures the pathos and patriotism of 1916.

The best history book I read was Gene Kerrigan's The Scrap . . as brilliantly paced as one of his thrillers.

Essential reading . . . his mastery lies in the telling detail . . . with his novelist's eye and democratic insistence on every character being afforded equal weight, Kerrigan directly brings us into the terrifying mayhem facing a group of ordinary volunteers during a week that left a city in flames.

A monumental account of the Easter Rising.

In the last hours of the 1916 Easter Rising, 20-year old Charlie Saurin came face to face with his Commander-in-Chief, Patrick Pearse. 
 
In a final gamble, Pearse had a desperate plan to save the collapsing rebellion. 
 
It required the sacrifice of Saurin and his comrades. 
 
The Scrap is the true story of the rising, from first-hand evidence, as seen by one rebel unit - F Company, 2nd Battalion - following them from the first skirmish in Fairview to the inferno of the GPO. 
 
Told in the context of some of the major events of that week, the story of F Company brings alive the excitement, the humour, the horror and the contradictions of that decisive moment in the creation of the Irish state.

Gene Kerrigan

Praise for The Scrap

Brilliant.

One of the most remarkable and enjoyable books that has been written about the Easter Rising in recent times . . . This stunning narrative . . a real page-turner that captures the pathos and patriotism of 1916.

The best history book I read was Gene Kerrigan's The Scrap . . as brilliantly paced as one of his thrillers.

Brilliant.

One of the most remarkable and enjoyable books that has been written about the Easter Rising in recent times . . . This stunning narrative . . a real page-turner that captures the pathos and patriotism of 1916.

The best history book I read was Gene Kerrigan's The Scrap . . as brilliantly paced as one of his thrillers.

Brilliant.

One of the most remarkable and enjoyable books that has been written about the Easter Rising in recent times . . . This stunning narrative . . a real page-turner that captures the pathos and patriotism of 1916.

The best history book I read was Gene Kerrigan's The Scrap . . as brilliantly paced as one of his thrillers.

Books by Gene Kerrigan

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