Northern Ireland: Journalist Chris Anderson, who knew him well, thought something stank about the murder of Billy Wright. In this book, he makes a convincing case for a public inquiry, writes Suzanne Breen.
The Billy Boy: The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright. By Chris Anderson. Mainstream Publishing, 207pp. £15.99
I never interviewed Billy Wright, but I always meant to. His figure loomed so large on the loyalist horizon that by not talking to him, a journalist was missing a vital piece of the Northern Ireland jigsaw.
I saw him once, just after the UVF gave him 72 hours to leave the country or face death. Wright organised a march in Portadown to defy the threat. Immaculately dressed with an acute air of self-belief, he stood out from the crowd. Certainly, he was a cut above the average loyalist paramilitary. He was intelligent, articulate and disciplined.
His Mid-Ulster brigade was the UVF's most active, murdering around two dozen Catholics. It was his threats at Drumcree in 1996 that led to the controversial Orange parade passing down the Garvaghy Road.
Wright became a major thorn in the side of the state. Unlike the Belfast leadership of the UVF and its political wing, the Progressive Unionist Party, he vigorously opposed the peace process.
After he set up the rival Loyalist Volunteer Force, he told friends he would end up in prison or the grave. Eight months later, he was in the H-Blocks. Eight months after that, he was dead.
Journalist Chris Anderson, who knew him well, thought something stank about his murder. In this book, he makes a convincing case for a public inquiry.
Wright was shot dead in a prison van as he headed for a visit two days after Christmas 1997. Three INLA members, since released under the Belfast Agreement, were convicted of the murder. But Anderson claims there was state collusion: a crucial security camera used to scan the jail roof was out of action that day. A prison officer on duty in the watchtower overlooking the murder scene was, despite his strong objections, ordered to leave his post on the morning of the killing.
Unusually, the LVF prison van was parked next to the INLA wing, instead of in its normal position beside the LVF wing. The night before the murder, the prison authorities gave the INLA a copy of the LVF visits' lists for the following day - the first and only recorded instance of such a "mistake".
Anderson points out that while demands for public inquiries into other controversial killings - like those of solicitors Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson - have attracted substantial support, Billy Wright's case hasn't.
UN representatives, US Senators, and church leaders don't queue up to meet his family. The Finucanes met Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street. The Wrights have never made it beyond the front door.
Anderson powerfully argues that Wright's paramilitary background is immaterial: "What he was, or was not, is irrelevant where truth and justice are concerned."
This was a brave book to write and some people worked hard to stop it. Anderson's telephone lines were inoperative for protracted periods without cause or explanation. His computers were twice stripped of their content.
In a place where journalists sometimes lack moral courage, Anderson, admirably, persevered. Some of the material is based on his previous interviews with Wright. While the book is undeniably strong on the details of his killing, it would have been fascinating to learn more about the man.
His childhood in republican south Armagh - he watched Gaelic football and had Catholic friends - could be more fully explored. So too could the period he spent preaching the gospel, especially his stint with shoppers in Cork.
The vast majority of the victims of Wright's Mid-Ulster brigade were uninvolved Catholics, not active republicans as he claimed.
It would have been interesting to hear how he justified the murder of two teenage girls and a young male customer in a mobile shop in Craigavon. Still, The Billy Boy is a gripping and provocative read. It raises all the questions which others must now answer.
Suzanne Breen is Senior Northern Correspondent of The Irish Times