From the moment his mother went into labour with him - on a transatlantic flight - Alan Croghan's life was chaotic. As a young boy in Coolock, north Dublin, he drank, smoked and bought Valium - from his father. He rarely attended school. What he loved best was stealing cars and driving them around, and his bedroom in the family home became a parts depot for his fellow thieves and joyriders. By the age of sixteen he had accumulated thirty-five criminal convictions - and yet he'd never been locked up. Fearing that his friends suspected he was a tout, he contrived to get himself imprisoned.
Disorganised Crime is the story of this troubled young boy, and of the man he became - a criminal and alcoholic who eventually had the strength and courage to give up the drink and go straight. It is also the story of a gifted writer trapped in the body of a juvenile delinquent, and of an ordinary decent criminal's struggle to make himself an ordinary decent man. Sometimes shocking, often hilarious, and always gripping, Alan Croghan's memoir is both an instant true-crime classic and an uplifting story of personal redemption.
