Frances Wilson

Ireland’s most notorious murderer still casts a disturbing spell

Investigating Malcolm Macarthur’s ‘criminal episode’ in 1982, Mark O’Connell finds uncomfortable similarities between himself and the dispassionate killer

Malcolm Macarthur leaves court in Dublin in July 1983 to start his 30-year prison sentence. [Getty Images]
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  • A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention and Murder

    Mark O’Connell

    Granta, pp. 304, £16

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