Malcolm Macarthur was a well-known Dublin socialite who passed his days mingling with artists end aristocrats, reading philosophy, and living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a threat co his lifestyle. A desperate Macarthur conceived a plan: he would commit bank robbery, a crime that had become common in Dublin at the time. But his scheme spun swiftly out of control when he needlessly killed two innocent strangers. The ensuing manhunt, arrest, end conviction amounted to one of the most infamous political scandals in modern Irish history, contributing to the eventua1 collapse of a government. Marx O'Connell spent countless hours in conversation with Macarthur-interviews that veered from confession to evasion. Through their tense exchanges and O'Connell's independent reporting, a pair of narratives unspools: a riveting account of Macarthur's crimes and a study of the hazy tins between truth and invention. At once propulsive and searching, A Thread of Violence is a hard look at a brutal act and the long shadow it casts. It offers a haunting and insightful examination of the lies we tell ourselves-and the lengths we'll go to preserve then.