Crime Reporter Michael O’Toole today reveals how this photograph was the reason why he created the lead character in his newly released novel Black Light.
“The photograph was the starting point for the entire story, I always knew I would use it as the basis for a novel,” O’Toole said in an interview to mark the publication of his first novel.
He explained that the photograph of well-known Garda Detective Sergeant Mick Moran was taken in France in 2008 by photographer Jim Walpole.
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O’Toole and Walpole went to Lyon in June of that year to interview Det Sgt Moran about his role in Interpol, the worldwide policing body.
He was on secondment from the Garda and led the body’s worldwide child protection operation – helping police forces snare paedophiles. Det Sgt Moran, who is originally from Meath, was heavily involved in Garda operations to tackle men who downloaded sick child abuse material images and videos online – and played a central role in the force’s Operation Amethyst in May 2002.
That was the first large-scale operation against abuse material, legally known as child pornography, that saw more than 100 homes raided – and dozens of men charged.
Det Sgt Moran then moved to Interpol on secondment, where he rose to assistant director and coordinated international investigations into crimes against children.
O’Toole interviewed him in that capacity – and it left a lasting impression on him.
The award-winning crime journalist said: “I went into the office and noticed Mick had a pair of oversized headphones on a bookshelf.
“Jim and I were chatting to him and I asked him what the craic was with the headphones.
“He just looked at me and said he wore them when he was examining child abuse videos so nobody else would have to hear the screams of the children. It shocked me to the core.
“I had always wanted to write fiction and knew one day I would create a character around that scene.”
Now, almost 15 years later, dad-of-three O’Toole (52) has done that.
The main character in his fast-paced thriller is a Dublin-based detective who leads a sex crimes unit, hunting rapists and paedophiles.
And, just like Det Sgt Moran, the hero in Black Light – John Lazarus – has a large pair of earphones in his office for examining stomach-churning videos of abuse.
The novel, which O’Toole says took him five years to finish because of the large number of real crimes he had to report on, centres on Lazarus’s fight to protect a teenage abuse victim from a dangerous drugs gang– and the mobster who attacked her.
But he also has to track down a monster who attacked a young woman walking home – before he strikes again.
And all the while he has to fight for the memory of his own sister – whose kidnap and murder has never been solved.
The novel is already winning praise for its fast pace and authentic feel – and O’Toole says he tried to make it as close to real life as possible.
“I’ve been a crime reporter for more than 20 years and the horrors I’ve witnessed and the victims I’ve spoken to are in every page of the book, in every word,” he says.
“I have always wanted to write an authentic crime novel set in Dublin and I’m very happy with Black Light.
“I have not based the story on any one case I have covered. The whole story is fiction and a product of my imagination, but the truth is my imagination is filled with thousands of different cases and tragedies and real life experiences. I think that comes across in Black Light. It is gritty, but real.”
O’Toole also says the book’s title comes from special ultraviolet torches that investigators use to search for blood, saliva and semen that are not visible in normal light – but for Lazarus it means something else entirely.
“Lazarus has seen the worst of people and he believes many of them have surrendered to the darkness inside them,” he adds.
“Some people call it evil, others call it a lack of empathy, but Lazarus calls it black light.”
O’Toole says the plan for the novel started to crystallise in his head after he covered the 2015 trial of depraved Graham Dwyer – which heard the supposed family man had a dark side.
“I was both fascinated and repelled by Dwyer,” O’Toole said.
“Here he was, a mild-mannered architect and model aircraft enthusiast who just happened to have a secret life as a sexual sadist and monster.
“I have been close to more killers than I care to remember, but there was something chilling about Dwyer.
“He spent months planning the murder of Elaine O’Hara, then carried it out, left her body in the Dublin Mountains, threw her belongings in a Wicklow reservoir – and went home as if it was a normal day in the office.
“I could not believe how depraved he was under the surface – but appeared so normal on the surface. I came away from his trial convinced, like Lazarus, that the black light of evil had possessed Dwyer.”
■ Black Light by Michael O’Toole is published by Maverick House. It is available now in bookshops and online.
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