Richard O’Rawe Books In Order

Publication Order of Ructions O'Hare Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Richard O’Rawe
Richard O’Rawe grew up in a house located at the corner of Peel Street and Mary Street in the Lower Falls district of Belfast. He was born into the Lower Falls area of Belfast and for thirty years experienced the full force of the civic unrest which enveloped Northern Ireland.

When this house got demolished in the year 1970 as part of the redevelopment of the area he and the rest of his family move to Ballymurphy. It was here that he got involved in politics. He was interned and later imprisoned in both the Crumlin Road gaol and in Long Kesh.

While in Long Kesh prison in the year 1981, he was Provisional IRA press officer, during the 1981 hunger strike by the prisoners which resulted in ten prisoners dying. Richard claims that terms for ending the 1981 hunger strikes, approved by the prisoners’ leadership in the prison got rejected by IRA commanders on the outside.

He suggests that the IRA had rejected this deal as Owen Carron, the Irish republican candidate, would have better odds winning the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election if the hunger strike was still going on when polling day came.

In the year 2005, he published his first book “Blanketmen”, which is a political book about the 1981 IRA/INLA hunger strike and was an Irish bestseller. It wasn’t until 2018 that he published his first novel, which was called “Northern Heist”.

Richard has got a penchant for such things as independent thinkers, red wine, and good food.

“In the Name of the Son” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 2017. An electrified young man, with his eyes wild and one fist clenched, bursts right out of the Old Bailey and declares he is innocent to the entire world. Gerry Conlon just won his appeal for the Guildford pub bombing in the year 1974.

After spending fifteen years in prison, freedom is now calling to him. Or is it? Conlon, after his release, was given almost a million pounds from government compensation, book and movie deals, and ran in the same circles as Daniel-Day Lewis, Johnny Depp, and Shane MacGowan. He seemed to have it all. But within just five years he was hooked on crack cocaine and eating out of trash cans in the backstreets of London.

Beyond the elation he felt from his release was the horrible descent he experienced into addiction, self-loathing, and isolation. What emerges out of the darkness and addiction is Gerry Conlon the pacifist. The man that became recognized all around the world as a campaigner against miscarriages of justice.

This book also reveals new evidence of statement tampering by authorities which would have cleared him at the initial trial. Richard, a lifelong friend, has written a candid and powerful tale about Gerry’s extraordinary life after his years of brutal incarceration at the hands of the British justice system.

Fans of this book found this to be very funny, while also making them tear up a few times.

“Northern Heist” is the first novel in the “Ructions O’Hare” series and was released in the year 2018. A suspenseful, fast paced thriller based off one of the biggest (and still not solved) bank robberies in history, and written by a former IRA bank robber.

Nobody robs banks in Belfast without the IRA getting a cut, not even ex-Provo James ‘Ructions’ O’Hare. However when word gets out that O’Hare could be up to something, the pressure from the IRA starts.

Ructions trusts his crack team of ex-paramilitary compadres, and has got full confidence in his rather audacious plan. He wants to literally empty the largest bank in Belfast by abducting the families of two employees, which is known as a “tiger” kidnapping, in order to force them into helping Ructions and his squad get into the bank vault.

However keeping this plan, as well as the money, from the IRA is a whole other plan entirely. One that requires all of Ruction’s skill and cunning.

Unleashing a story that is going to shock, thrill, and surprise you on this white-knuckle ride through the criminal underbelly in Belfast. Enter the lethal world of kangaroo courts, tiger kidnappings, drug deals, money laundering, and double crosses.

This debut novel is just as well executed and audacious as Ructions’ plans to rob the National Bank itself is.

The language is coarse at times and the violence is explosive, however neither prevents from this still having a bit of redemption and nobility from shining through, sometimes from the darkest of souls. This is an entertaining story that moves from a cracking pace from the start, the characters are clearly drawn, with the investments, intricacies, and excitement of planning out a large robbery are conveyed well, and the ever-present threat of getting betrayed and getting caught loom rather large.

However this story is more than just skin deep, as Richard also tells the truth about the terror and ruthlessness that make tiger kidnappings work so very effectively.

“Goering’s Gold” is the second novel in the “Ructions O’Hare” series and was released in the year 2022. Former IRA soldier Ructions O’Hare discovers that, while real life historians speculate it actually occurred, Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering his this huge stash of plundered gold bullion in Ireland during World War II.

The cast of Northern Heist, along with some neo-Nazi thugs, returns, in hot pursuit of the fabled gold stash of Goering. And the man that finally figured out where it could be: Ructions O’Hare.

However coming out of hiding to go back to Ireland is no mean feat for O’Hare. As both the IRA and an international police force are still going after him for the Northern Bank job. Then there’s the Neo Nazis that believe the Nazi loot belongs to them as their inheritance, and are more than happy to kill anybody that gets in their way.

Slowly, while Ructions figures out the clues to the location of the gold, and his adversaries realize that he is actually getting close, it is as if a noose is starting to tighten around him.