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A cult figure among loyalists, despised and feared by nationalists, Billy 'King Rat' Wright is reputed to have been involved in a number of sectarian murders before he himself was shot dead by republican gunmen inside the Maze
Prison in 1997.
Wright became involved with loyalist paramilitaries at the age of 16, and in the early 1990s he emerged as the UVF commander in the Mid-Ulster area. The Billy Boy documents Wright's role in the Drumcree dispute of 1995-96 and his split from the UVF, recounting how he ignored both a death threat and an order to leave Northern Ireland, only to remain in Portadown and form the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It covers Wright's trial and subsequent imprisonment for a crime it has been claimed was set up by the State; recounts the circumstances of his killing inside a top-security prison; and investigates the allegations of State collusion in Wright's death.
Terrifically gripping and often disturbing, The Billy Boy is an exhaustive account of a notorious figure of the Troubles, whose life and death were surrounded by controversy and political debate.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Billy Boy: The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright (Hardcover)
This book was disappointing, very detailed in some aspects and heavily sanitized in other sections. The author has decided to carry the mantle for David Wright's search for the truth about his son's death. The reader endures repeated accounts of prison layout, processes and procedures, which are reviewed again and again after several investigative follow-up visits by David Wright and his supporters. From a compassionate stance we can empathize with Billy Wright's father, who has pursued the truth with great tenacity.Anderson's support to David Wright is admirable, but his rose-tinted and heavily sanitized account of who Billy Wright really was, makes the book fictional in parts. Anderson skips over murders avoiding telling the reader of Billy Wright's involvement and in one incident tries to infer the execution of a Catholic taxi driver was an action without Wright's support. He uses the term "gunman" when describing LVF activity and avoids mentioning Wright by name. There is no mention of other forms of collusion that allowed Wright to carry out several "operations" without convictions. Did he have help? The reader didn't learn what drove Wright's violence nature and the book will infuriate those who lost family members through Wright and his terrorist colleagues' actions.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very poor and disappointing account,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Billy Boy: The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright (Hardcover)
I bought this book in expectation that it might tell me something about Billy Wright the man - what motivated him, what specific involvement he had in UVF and LVF killings, what he was like as a person. (For example, something similar to the excellent account of Johnny Adair given in the recent book by Lister and Jordan. If they can give such insightful detail about someone who is still alive, how come Anderson gives us so little on the deceased Wright?) In fact, this book is much more about the death of Wright in HMP Maze and the apparent collusion of the prison authorities therein, than a rounded account of Wright's life and terrorist career. It's not well written - Anderson writes more like a small-town journalist used to covering petty sessions and village fetes and isn't someone who has a good story-telling style - and it basically serves up a litany of UVF and LVF crimes with little or no information on Wright's highly probable involvement in them, plus some direct quotes from a tape recording of Wright, padded out with a vast polemic on his death. I also strongly object to Anderson's style, in which he tries to hard to report things objectively, for example by saying repeatedly that Wright was never convicted of X, or that there was no evidence to link him with Y. That's all very well if the account concerns someone genuinely innocent, but I hardly think that there's anyone on the planet (barring ultra loyalists of unsound mind) who thinks that Wright was anything other than a bigoted, murdering thug. That said, he didn't deserve state execution - but the book-buying public don't deserve such a poorly-written, superficial account as the one that Anderson has written. Avoid.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A diluted Read,
By
This review is from: The Billy Boy: The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright (Paperback)
I bought this book in order to balance the viewpoint after reading several books from the other side such as 'KILLING RAGE', 'UNSUNG HERO' and 'FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING'. The book covers its topic area in detail and for the niche reader is probably a good reference point but personally my attention span only lasted around a quarter of the way through. It covered areas several times over and I felt 'padded' out the major points of interest in order to make a novel. I've put this down and started on 'THE SHANKILL BUTCHERS' instead.
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