Defining Moments in Ulster's Terror War

Milestones in Murder

'In Ulster, death is not the leveller it is in other parts of the world. Here, there is a hierarchy in death and many of these killings became murder milestones on a bloody road with no end.' These were the words of a veteran murder squad detective who was at the cutting edge of the conflict in Northern Ireland for a quarter of a century. They provided the motivation for the research into Milestones in Murder, which reveals aspects of certain killings that have remained undisclosed until now.

Hugh Jordan has worked for over ten years as a senior crime reporter with The Sunday World - Ireland's biggest selling Sunday newspaper. He has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest exposes in the country, naming top drug dealers and paramilitary Godfathers.

Beginning with the death of legendary IRA figure Sean South of Garryowen on New Year's Day 1957, the book describes the background to what we have now come to call 'the troubles' and paints vivid 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. Milestones in Murder 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. It revisits the horrific murders of the Shankhill Butchers, exclusively revealing exactly who leader Lennie Murphy's accomplices were. This, amongst other revelations, will piece together several parts of the Irish warfare jigsaw for the first time. The book 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.

David Lister

Hugh Jordan

The definitive history of Johnny Adair and his Company of evil . . . Well written, meticulously researched and richly illuminated

The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company'

A mindless sectarian psychopath or a loyalist folk hero who took the war to the IRA's front door? The name Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair is synonymous with a killing spree by loyalist terrorists that took Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war. 
 
From humble beginnings as a rioter and glue-sniffer on Belfast's Shankill Road, Adair rose through the ranks of the outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters to head its merciless killing machine, 'C Company'. Surrounded by a group of trusted friends, his reign of terror in the early 1990s claimed the lives of up to 40 Catholics, picked out at random as Adair's hitmen roamed Belfast. Determined to lead from the front, his men even fired a rocket at Sinn Fein's headquarters, writing themselves into loyalist mythology and embarrassing the IRA in its republican heartland. Its desperate attempts to kill Adair culminated in October 1993, when a bomb on the Shankill Road, intended for the loyalist godfather, claimed the lives of nine Protestant civilians. 
 
Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company' describes in graphic detail Adair's criminal empire and an egomaniac's bloody war against Catholics and anybody else who got in his way. Adair's friends and enemies talk for the first time about the murders he ordered, his sordid personal life, and his attempts - ultimately disastrous - to become Northern Ireland's supreme loyalist figurehead.

Hugh Jordan

Praise for Mad Dog

Sensational

The definitive history of Johnny Adair and his Company of evil . . . Well written, meticulously researched and richly illuminated

Ulster's book of the year

Sensational

The definitive history of Johnny Adair and his Company of evil . . . Well written, meticulously researched and richly illuminated

Ulster's book of the year

Sensational

The definitive history of Johnny Adair and his Company of evil . . . Well written, meticulously researched and richly illuminated

Ulster's book of the year

Books by Hugh Jordan

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