Hard Cases is a collection of startling stories about the reality of crime and court cases in Ireland. In these stories, there are no crime bosses with quaint nicknames; the police don't collect convenient clues that tell them who dunnit.

Instead, we get cases both famous and obscure in which the outcome is sometimes just, sometimes unsettling.

It begins with 'Dessie O'Hare's Last Stand', which records in breathtaking detail the inside story of a notorious kidnapping. It ends with 'The Small Legend of Karl Crawley', the story of a sometimes gentle, sometimes wild young Dublin man who found a shocking way of fighting back against authority.

There's the story of how Peter Mathews went into a police station to answer questions about a petty crime and ended up dead, with gardai covering up the reason why. How did Fr Molloy come to die in the bedroom of his married friends? What happened when a man came home to find his daughter's boyfriend wielding a hatchet?

Then there are the stories of murder, incest, libel and the legal warfare between rival Elvis fans.