{"id":630038,"date":"2025-12-13T11:09:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/630038\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T11:09:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:09:21","slug":"a-startling-tale-of-audacious-criminality-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/630038\/","title":{"rendered":"a startling tale of audacious criminality \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Northern Bank Job: The Heist and How They Got Away With It<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Glenn Patterson<\/p>\n

ISBN-13:<\/strong> 9781035917976<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Head of Zeus <\/p>\n

Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a316.99 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the numbers that jump out when reading Glenn Patterson\u2019s absorbing account of the 2004 Northern Bank robbery<\/a>, fleshed out from his excellent BBC podcast on what was then the biggest bank raid in Irish and British history. <\/p>\n

The stolen \u00a326.5 million remains the eye-catching figure. But we also have: the 18 minutes it took police to arrive at the bank after a tip about suspicious behaviour in a side street by the building; two constables, from the three-year-old Police Service of Northern Ireland<\/a>, responded while patrolling Belfast\u2019s bustling evening streets five days before Christmas. <\/p>\n

The city is mostly peaceful six years on from the Belfast Agreement<\/a>, and slowly recovering from the Troubles. It takes just seven minutes for \u00a318.5 million to be moved from the bank to a white getaway van. The robbers then audaciously decide on a second run: giving the two Northern Bank staff, Kevin McMullan and Chris Ward, whose families are being held hostage<\/a>, 15 minutes to load two metal cages with as many used banknotes as possible (approximately \u00a38 million). It takes a bit longer than this, but then they are away.<\/p>\n

The figures are just a flavour of the depth of detail Patterson methodically compiles in his reconstruction of the Northern Bank case; a criminal operation that, as the author admits, remains startling, fascinating and confounding to this day. Suspicions were quickly directed towards the Provisional IRA, which has always denied responsibility. <\/p>\n

Another number worth recollecting: only one person has been successfully prosecuted for anything to do with the Northern Bank, Cork moneylender Ted Cunningham, who was convicted of laundering \u00a33 million in cash<\/a> from the robbery. No one has been convicted for the robbery itself.<\/p>\n

The bank raid\u2019s impact is what makes Patterson\u2019s book truly valuable, including the stories of the families who endured the ordeal. The author shrewdly looks at the \u201cbank job\u201d through the prism of the complex peace process. While never downplaying the gravity of the incident, Patterson bitingly satirises the political establishment\u2019s response with the heady punch of Belfast paps soaked in Buckfast. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest challenge to the investigation of the Northern Bank robbery was the fact that everything in Northern Ireland has for two and a half decades been subservient to the peace process,\u201d Patterson told the Orwell Foundation, \u201cOr, rather, that the peace process is invoked as a reason not to delve too deeply into certain events.\u201d This book reminds us this is a story that has never really had an ending.<\/p>\n

NJ McGarrigle is a journalist based in Co Derry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Northern Bank Job: The Heist and How They Got Away With It Author: Glenn Patterson ISBN-13: 9781035917976…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[26319,17976,1144,75955,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-630038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-belfast-agreement","9":"tag-book-reviews","10":"tag-northern-ireland","11":"tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115711951893675292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}