The Going Rate

A screenwriter wants to write about Dublin’s violent criminals. When it comes to his research, how deep is too deep?

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Ireland's Hundred Thousand Welcomes continues to draw immigrants to its faltering Celtic Tiger economy. For those hundreds of thousands of Poles - Catholic, hard-working, white and like the Irish, survivors of an overbearing neighbour - Ireland works. 


But the Tiger devours too. Barely a week in Ireland.  20-year-old Tadeusz Klos lies in a coma on a rainswept Dublin street. He will not survive. 


This murder is a tipping point. Gang violence and brazen shootings have already made Dublin’s streets a battleground. Media outrage in Poland and Ireland push the Gardaí to come up with answers. Should the fabled specialist Murder Squad really have been disbanded three years ago? Minogue is suddenly in demand. ‘Whatever you need’ he is told.


With the Polish embassy pressing for answers, Garda brass passes on the pressure to Minogue. Yet Minogue’s arrival is already resented in the city Garda station to where he has been parachuted.


With little to go on, Minogue soon forms a picture of a chance event: bad timing, a swarm of drunken youths, racist impulses finding expression. Minogue continues to call in favours, and slowly that picture begins to cloud and turn to a different story entirely. Tadeusz Klos was no angel either. He was involved in petty crime back in Poland. 


Ready or not, Minogue is about to drop down a crevasse into Dublin’s underworld. Not far from the busy world-class shopping and the crowded nightclubs, is where drug lords and their hired killers rule.


‘A luxurious book, full of fascinating characters and wonderful insights into the new Ireland.’ - Globe and Mail (Canada)