Killing Rage [Hardcover]

Eamon Collins (Author), Mick McGovern (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 1997

This is an account of how an angry young man can cross the line that divides theoretical support for violence from a state of "killing rage," in which the murder of neighbor becomes thinkable. Over 3,000 people have died in Northern Ireland since 1969, and most of them have died at the hands of their neighbors. The intimacy of the Ulster conflict, what it means to carry out a political murder when in all probability the victim is personally known, or lives in a nearby street, is described accurately by an honest participant. The book does not attempt to soften the impact of the events it describes through euphemism or rhetoric. It is a truthful picture of the brutality and waste caused by the IRA's unwinnable campaign, and of its human consequences. It is also a self-portrait of the despair and disintegration, the hardening to conscience and grief, that accompany political violence.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Eamon Collins never pulled a trigger for the Irish Republican Army. But he helped organize several hits--some "successful," others not. Upon joining the IRA, he was warned that "in all probability, [he] would end up on the run, in prison, or dead." Collins would end up all three: after a bombing attack--in which he had played no part--he was arrested, and after five days of punishing interrogation, agreed to turn informer. Changes of heart eventually led him to recant his confessions, and he was sent to prison. Upon his release, the IRA forced him into exile "outside the war zone." As time passed, he returned to his family home and tried to move on. In 1995 Collins appeared on British television to tell the story of his life in the IRA.

Killing Rage presents his story in fuller detail, allowing Collins to try to explain "why a segment of people within the Catholic population believed that the best way to redress their grievances was through violence." Collins also painted an unsavory portrait of the IRA--while showing their Protestant counterparts in an equally unflattering light.

In his introduction, Collins admits he is sorry about the deaths he caused:

But my sorrow is not enough.... By exposing myself to the anger of my former comrades and the families of my victims, I wanted to show that I had thought long and hard about what had happened and that it is possible to become a different person--as we all have to become different people if we are to live together in Northern Ireland without political violence.

Killing Rage, however, clearly reopened old wounds. Collins was found murdered on January 28, 1999. --Sunny Delaney

Review

Where Killing Rage succeeds--and it often does--is as an eyewitness account. Collins wanted to show the true horror of his experiences. He does. -- The New York Times Book Review, Jo Thomas

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Granta UK (April 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1862070083
• ISBN-13: 978-1862070080
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,958,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book..., May 3, 2001

By 

P. Mullaney (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Killing Rage (Paperback)

...but I would not recommend this as a first book on the Northern Ireland conflict. The conflict is incalculably more complex, polemically as well strategically, than is generally understood. If you are a reader from Great Britain or the United States, your media has grossly oversimplified its analysis of The Troubles of a span of years. In view of this disservice, you would benefit from reading a detailed, objective overview of the situation before taking on "Killing Rage".

As others here have said, one cannot come away from this book with the feeling that the Provisional IRA's campaign is justified. This is unfortunate. What the reader can miss is the fact that there once were sound political positions behind the campaigns of the PIRA, most Loyalist paramilitary groups and the British Army. The duration of The Troubles stems directly from the fact that these sound positions were mutually excusive of each other. But because this is primarily a story of Eamon Collins' personal redemption, the PIRA's violence takes center stage among that of all the combatants. Thus the reader may feel encouraged to villify the PIRA exclusively because of the recantations of a former member. (The IRA did nothing to counteract this misimpression by murdering Collins.) But really fact the PIRA was, next to the British Army, merely the richest and best organized player (though not the most violent) in what amounted to little more than a street war between rival gangs.

A second problem lies with Collins' contextual interpretations of the IRA's political stance. The IRA's violence is set against its stubborn belief -only recently abandoned- that Loyalism was an artificial construct of British political and economic interests. This is not Collins' fault, since he was after all a PIRA member. Indeed, until the late 1990's the IRA's Army Council simply couldn't believe that a majority of people in the Six Counties had no desire to be part of the Republic. This context gives us great insight into the delusions the PIRA perpetuated to motivate itself and its young trained killers. It doesn't tell us that such blindness perpetuated all parties to the conflict, or that absurdity of the violence was the result of a 30-year degenerative detachment of the violence from its justification as opposed to some philosophical weakness in particular combatant groups.

This is not to say that the book is flawed. It's excellent. But it provides an incomplete picture of the issues at work. I would recommend Jack Holland's "Hope against History" as a good survey of the recent 30-year round of the The Troubles, and a good basis for more personal accounts. In light of Holland's moderate overview, "Killing Rage" would be one of several interesting and thought-provoking second steps. Ultimately, "Killing Rage" is a vivid story of an element always extant in paramilitary groups: relatively naive, regular guys with the honorable desire to fight for freedom, whose sense of personal honor saves their souls when that fight drifts from principle.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read It For What It Is, January 25, 2002

By 

Spencer B. Clark "spencerbc" (San Ramon, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Killing Rage (Hardcover)

I just got done with this book, and just got done reading some of the criticisms aimed at it.

First, this isn't a prolonged analysis of the IRA stuggle. There are serveral book/sites that will give you that in cold, unemotional detail.

Second, this isn't a balanced, objective look at the problems of Northern Ireland involving the IRA, Loyalists, RUC, and the British Army.

This is an autobiographical account of ONE MAN's tale of being in the IRA. Collins isn't out to make friends here. He states honestly and openly about his cold heartedness of his vicitims and at other times about his agony over incorrect targets. And when you think he should feel guilty or upset, he tells you he doesn't. That is what makes this an honest tale for me.

Collins made a career for himself in the IRA. About the time he was getting promoted, both in the IRA "nutting" squad and in Sinn Fein, he was really starting to feel used by the IRA, but couldn't find a way to quit. This was his state of mind when he was arrested by the Brits and held for 7 days, a policy designed to crack suspected terrorists, and one which he had held up under before.

I really enjoyed this book. I'll never look at the IRA again the same way. The movies tend to glamorize them, making them out to be a crack army of professionals. Read this book and you'll never think that way again.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rage and redemption, December 4, 2000

By 

Edgar Knispel (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killing Rage (Paperback)

In the summer of 1982 three gun shots narrowly miss off-duty RUC policeman Alfred White. As their sounds still resonate through the Newry neighbourhood and absorb, stifle and stop all other human activity, White runs for his life. Chased and in mortal agony he resorts to instinct and darts towards his home. There the hit man steps forward, "his Browning .38 pistol extended." At this fleeing threshold of death White takes his umbrella and starts in an insane dance trying to fence with his killer. A few days later, after the mourners have left, the young IRA volunteer Eamon Collins, who set White up for assassination, kneels down at his grave, "not to pay my respect, but to read the messages on his wreaths to see whether his RUC colleagues had left any useful details."

Eamon Collins is not a kind man. As an information officer for the IRA he was involved in some of the most abhorrent murders in Northern Ireland. For years he ruthlessly staked out people that the IRA deemed "legitimate targets". Often for months, he followed them to find the essential bit of regularity in their lifes and movements (their "fatal routine") that made them vulnerable and open to attack. At some later point in his life, Collins sits down to talk about political violence - and we better listen.

In the first part of his book Collins gives the insider's account of the IRA. Subdivided into "operations" it largely dismisses the idea of a highly disciplined and trained army fighting exclusively for the ethereal cause of Irish freedom. Instead, he presents an organization pervaded by bunglers and lowlifes. Oblivious to any questions about the military and political exigencies - if not any moral concerns - of their doing they kill most of their victims out of revenge, rage or routine. The others die - sort of - accidentally, due to wrong identification or sloppy bomb work. However, despite all its sordidness, Collins' fast-paced story is also an engrossing tale of reckless adventure, of shoot-outs, hideouts and skidding getaway cars. On side roads accross the border, past grisly loyalist gangs in Belfast, underneath the hovering army helicopters in South Armagh, Collins sneaks the reader to truly bizarre places: to training camps, secret commander meetings, blown up customs stations, to "safe houses" and to"death houses".

This breakneck existence ends with an explosion. After a bomb detonates in Newry and kills nine police officers, Collins, who was not involved in the operation, is immediately arrested and whisked off to the infamous Gough Barracks. On the fifth day of interrogation and torture at the hands of the RUC two officers lie beside him on the floor, "one at each ear, shouting in unison: 'Murdering dog, Murdering dog. You're going away for life, you murdering dog.' They screamed at the tops of their voices for at least half an hour. ... . Suddenly, as I lay there, I began to feel like a participant in a spectacle from an absurdist play. ... . In that moment, as I floated in unreality, I realized that I had lost my will to resist." Collins gets up, sits down and starts talking, first to the Crown forces and then to anyone who cared to listen. Unflinchingly, he details his role in the IRA and the suffering he has brought to his victims. He confronts and betrays his former comrades and then - during the legal proceedings that ensue - zealously strives to enrage everyone who could harm him: the Provos, the loyalists, the army and the RUC. In the end, the boy who wanted to be a Brit, become a lawyer, rise in the ranks of the IRA and who eventually not even made it as a "grass" takes them all on.

The essential weakness of Collins' book is its style. It too strictly abides to the conventions of the factual account. It does not adequately convey the immediacy, drama and speed of the action. At times, in an effort to create a poignancy the story already carries, it slides into the melodramatic. Despite these shortcomings it is astonishing that so far no film director has stumbled over the book, given the visual power of Collins' memory.

As it is, "Killing Rage" is not passionately optimistic about lasting peace in Northern Ireland. In fact, if there is any hope at all to be found in the book it lies in Collins' unconditional belief in the idea of justice - even although this idea, more often than not, arrives with a vengeance.