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No Hiding Place may be, as it's author points out, a fictional story - but its every line speaks the truth; a veracity derived from the fact that this is a fictionalised interpretation of real and genuinely tragic events (the book is dedicated to the author's late sister Pat, who suffered terribly during her short lifetime). Not only is this a horrifying tale of a young life destroyed from the ver... More

No Hiding Place may be, as it's author points out, a fictional story - but its every line speaks the truth; a veracity derived from the fact that this is a fictionalised interpretation of real and genuinely tragic events (the book is dedicated to the author's late sister Pat, who suffered terribly during her short lifetime). Not only is this a horrifying tale of a young life destroyed from the very beginning by violent and sexual abuse, it's also something of a parable about the way abuse and suffering almost inevitably create their own self-fulfilling prophesies or vicious circles.

The book opens as a dissolute, alcoholic vagrant is hauled up before a judge on yet another charge and rescued by a long-suffering priest, who attempts for the thousandth time to clean him up, dry him out and get him to stay in the Roman Catholic Church hostel. Craving alcohol and the deranged inner world he's built inside his head, the man - Erin Dooley - absconds...

Now the author shows us the real beginning of Dooley's story - one in which the Roman Catholic Church, far from being his saviour, must shoulder much of the blame for the suffering and seduction that led him here. Savagely beaten by his father, and physically punished by bullying Christian Brothers at school, the young Erin already bears the physical and mental scars of abuse. When his alcoholic father beats his sister to death the boy breaks down totally and finds himself in a psychiatric hospital. Beginning a recurring pattern, he runs away to London and the arms of Father David, a Catholic priest, who takes him to a church mission, where he routinely abuses the boys in his care. The paedophile priest introduces the boy to drink and drugs as part of his seduction and soon he and two of his fellow inmates run away again, this time to become professional rent boys - an occupation fraught with danger, despair and many, many more tragedies to come.

Not for the faint-hearted, the brutal truths in this novel are at times hard to bear, yet Cobb carries the weight of a story close to his heart with a lightness of touch; a sense of distant, if forlorn hope that keeps you reading from cover to cover.

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