Booktopia has been placed into Voluntary Administration. Orders have been temporarily suspended, whilst the process for the recapitalisation of Booktopia and/or sale of its business is completed, following which services may be re-established. All enquiries from creditors, including customers with outstanding gift cards and orders and placed prior to 3 July 2024, please visit https://www.mcgrathnicol.com/creditors/booktopia-group/
Add free shipping to your order with these great books
A Thread of Violence - Mark O'Connell

A Thread of Violence

By: Mark O'Connell

Paperback | 29 January 2023

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $29.99

$28.50

In Stock and Aims to ship next day
What does it mean to write about a killer? From an award-winning author comes a tale of a notorious double-murder, a political scandal, and a writer who found himself entangled in this strange, true story.

In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history and the words used to describe the crimes (grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre, and almost unbelievable) have remained in the cultural lexicon as the acronym GUBU.

Mark O'Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. But in recent years this haunting has become mutual. When O'Connell sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur himself, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk.

As the two men circle one another, O'Connell is pushed into a confrontation with his own narrative: what does it mean to write about a murderer?

About the Author

Mark O'Connell is an award-winning Irish writer. His first book, To Be a Machine, won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. In 2019, he became the first ever non-fiction writer to win the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second book, Notes From an Apocalypse was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He is a contributor to the New York Review of Books, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker.

More in Non-Fiction Prose

Deep Water : The world in the ocean - James Bradley

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF
Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia - Anita Heiss

RRP $32.99

$30.25

The End of the Morning - Charmian Clift

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Hazzard and Harrower : The letters - Brigitta Olubas

RRP $39.99

$35.35

12%
OFF
Get Your Sh*t Together : A No F*cks Given Guide - Sarah Knight

RRP $34.99

$17.25

51%
OFF
The Republic : Penguin Classics - Plato

RRP $17.99

$17.25

American Mother - Colum McCann

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Excitable Boy : Essays on Risk - Dominic Gordon

RRP $29.99

$27.90

Who Gets to Be Smart : Privilege, Power and Knowledge - Bri Lee
Tissue - Madison Griffiths

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Polish Your Academic Writing : Super Quick Skills - Helen Coleman
No Judgement : On Being Critical - Lauren Oyler

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Outback Survival - Bob Cooper

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Reefs : The Oceans' Underwater Ecosystems - Peter Mavrikis

FREE SHIPPING