The Real Sweeney by
Dick Kirby
pbk out February 05
(Constable Robinson)
at £7.99
Joseph Wambaugh described this book as `a page-turning experience' -
and he's right. The opening chapter relives a 1985 heist in which a
security worker's wife and daughter were handcuffed and held at
gunpoint. It's alarmingly topical. Chapter two deals with informants,
sometimes lost and lonely individuals who bask in approval from the
police. There's pathos here aplenty, with one informant found dead of an
overdose with a scrap of paper containing Dick Kirby's telephone number
still clutched in his hand.
The Real Sweeney covers the whole gamut of police experience, from the
stress of the witness box to the couldn't-make-it-up experience of finding
a rag and bone man having sex with his horse. Kirby also has to deal with
the madness that exists in almost every organisation when lazy
incompetents who talk a good talk make it to the top. Though
understandably angry at such injustices, he enlivens his writing with
humour, noting that `names have been changed to protect the vacuous and
the intransigent.'
An insightful look at criminals and their victims which makes an ideal
companion to the author's previous book, Rough Justice.
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The Real Sweeney by
Dick Kirby
