The Number One Bestseller
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For over thirty years, David McDonald worked in Ireland''s biggest prisons. This is his story.
As a young officer, McDonald got a baptism of fire in Mountjoy. In 1989 it was a chaotic, pungent and overcrowded place, and the approach to keeping order was primitive.
Returning to his hometown two years later, he entered Portlaoise Prison, which - due to the presence of IRA and other subversive prisoners - was then the most secure prison in Europe. McDonald was amazed to discover the power of these subversives within the prison. Portlaoise, and later the new Midlands Prison, were also where Ireland''s emerging class of serious gangsters were housed. McDonald dealt with notorious household names like John Gilligan, Christy Kinahan, Brian Meehan, Dessie O''Hare and, more recently, killers like Graham Dwyer, in his average working day.
McDonald shares vivid accounts of the constant war of attrition between p
