The Viper: The Life and Crimes of Martin Foley, Mick McCaffrey

From Amazon:

I m dead, I m dead. Dean did it, Dean did it ... Martin Foley mumbled the words to paramedics who had rushed to the scene of the fourth assassination attempt on the infamous Viper. Just minutes before, a masked gunman had shot the veteran criminal seven times and left him for dead. Foley lapsed into a coma and doctors feared the worst, but less than a fortnight later he was sitting up in his hospital bed, drinking tea and chatting to nurses. But when gardaí asked the patient to name the hitman, Foley suddenly suffered a bout of amnesia. Only certain death would excuse breaking the golden rule of gangland: never cooperate with the cops. The Viper: The Life and Crimes of Martin Foley tells the extraordinary story of Ireland s most recognisable and notorious criminal. From his early days, learning his trade on daring jewellery heists with The General, to his time as a major drugs importer, buying product with the blessing of John Gilligan, The Viper has seen and done it all ... and he has eighteen bullet wounds to prove it. In a career that has spanned over four decades Foley has had countless fallings out with gangland bosses and frequent clashes with the Provos, but The Viper is the Rasputin of organized crime he s the criminal who refuses to die. Mick McCaffrey exposes Foley s cowardly assault on a brave garda detective, who was left with injuries from which he would never recover. And he reveals how the young criminals who Foley mentored ultimately conspired to have him murdered, leaving him with little choice but to go straight, or at least as straight as he knew how. There has never been a more controversial crime figure than Martin Foley, and this is the book he doesn t want you to read.